Suggestion: Narrative Mode for Dungeons

Jamaroo172

Greetings!

It goes without question that developers have put an immense amount of detail into Dungeon designs and narratives. unfortunately, unless you have a full group willing to invest in the quests, it is very unlikely you have time to experience dialog or absorb key features of the surroundings, furthermore these quests are currently singular and cannot be repeated unless a new character is made. This will be a suggestion for the addition of a system that allows players to perform Dungeon related quests outside of group play, whilst retaining all current game elements related to dungeons and diversifying the use of Dungeon gameplay aspects.

Target Players and themes:

-Questers
-Beginners
-Relaxed gameplay
-Solo Gameplay
-Companions

Aim:

- To allow repeated plays of Dungeon quests outside of group play.
- To allow players to experience dungeons at their own pace.
- Introduce a new area of play that is approachable for all players to participate in irrespective of skill level.

How it will work:

- A new section is introduced under 'find a dungeon' in the Group tab.
- This 'narrative' section contains a list of dungeons, however the difficulty of these dungeons is significantly scaled down with the intention of being achieved solo, however it is not exclusively solo (you may bring your friends along as well).
- To prevent farming and abuse of the system, Set drops from bosses and are disabled. chests may spawn but will not drop sets, and any other additional elements of gain (such as Keys from Scrivener's Hall) are also disabled. All associated achievments are also disabled
- Starting Quests for dungeons will remain and provide the same rewards (Gear piece and Skill point), after this quest has been completed, a Daily quest version will be added for this game mode. it will provide you with a token container with a random set part (Daily cooldown ensures this cannot be farmed effectively and encourages people to join grouped dungeons to farm for gear).
- Enemy Health and Damage is changed to be much more manageable ( likened to Normal Maelstrom Arena)
- Group mechanics are removed/ significantly scaled down. this will allow for some dungeons to be completed Solo (E.g. Direfrost Keep with pressure plates or Death-beam from Zaan in Scalecaller Peak) and also add space for newer players to observe how dungeon mechanics operate so they may re-apply them when they move onto grouped content.
- (Optional) New system of multiple companions being active at once of this mode, however, a system will need to be introduced to penalize each additional companion to prevent excessive XP farming. For example, XP Gained from you is divided further per each additional companion followed by an additional reduction (EXAMPLE ONLY: 2 companions = (total-5%)/2 per each, 3 companions= (total-10%)/3 per each). this ensures that it is overall much faster to focus on one companion at a time for XP, however multiple is possible but slower to progress.

Pros:

- Will allow players to experience both the detail of dungeons and their associated narrative in their own time, this is even more valuable to new dungeons that act as prequels to upcoming updates, where players can receive the fullest amount of information presented before the upcoming update and 'meet' with returning characters and participate in choices in dialog when presented.
- Secondary function of being a beginner/ training mode will mean new players can have a better understanding of map layout and mechanics of the dungeon prior to group play. allowing for overall faster group play runs.
- As the primary quest would be completed in this mode, the occurrence of players needing to do quests in group runs, slightly speeding up overall runs in group play.
- could serve as a new way to incorporate multiple companions the player has unlocked into a new game mode.

Cons:
- may require time to produce as certain dungeons will need to be re-worked to allow compatibility.
- may very slightly reduce population to dungeon queues
- may present new areas of exploitation if not correctly implemented.

Conclusion:

An addition of a Narrative driven mode separate to the current system would allow for players to absorb the wonderful detail of narrative and design that is implemented in this aspect of the game. resulting in better informed players overall of story related aspect as well as secondarily providing newer players with a way of learning dungeons at their own Pace.

Note:

I would not usually incorporate others into a suggestion (as it may be regarded as a nuisance) but members of one of my Guilds mentioned to add the tag of @ZOS_GinaBruno as they appreciated the idea. I do apologize for any inconvenience should it occur.

prof-dracko

Something like this has been a suggestion since dungeons were implemented. Every time another batch of them release a few more threads with this exact topic and suggestion pop up. Nothing has come from it so far. We can dream this is one of the Q3 quality-of-life updates they teased, but I doubt it at this point. At this stage you'd get better results by capturing wild pigeons, tattooing this idea on their backs and hoping they fly into the ZOS office window.

isadoraisacat

I would love a solo dungeon mode for us solo players so we can learn the story without players rushing.
No rewards or anything just story. Than once we get some new lore / story we can jump into the normal group 4 man dungeon.

LunaFlora

that would be soo amazing. i wish i could just calmly experience the story of dungeons

isadoraisacat

LunaFlora wrote: »

that would be soo amazing. i wish i could just calmly experience the story of dungeons

Same here

Snamyap

I know this comes as a shocker to some people but the vast majority of dungeons, including DLC ones, can already be soloed. There is only a handful that has unsurmountable group mechanics.
Yes, it requires a proper build and knowing how the game works. But if there are people who can solo dungeons on veteran mode, then you can most likely do it on normal. Especially now that we have companions, that are a lot more useful than some people are willing to give them credit for it.

Aardappelboom

Snamyap wrote: »

I know this comes as a shocker to some people but the vast majority of dungeons, including DLC ones, can already be soloed. There is only a handful that has unsurmountable group mechanics.
Yes, it requires a proper build and knowing how the game works. But if there are people who can solo dungeons on veteran mode, then you can most likely do it on normal. Especially now that we have companions, that are a lot more useful than some people are willing to give them credit for it.

Yes, it's very possible, but ESO has a pretty large skill gap, instead of dancing around that they should embrace it. Add a narrative mode for dungeons, and at the same time add a veteran mode for zone story quests and other story-based content.

The fact just remains that with all the rotations, weaving and more or less complex stat calculations there's people who excel at combat, while others just want to experience combat in a more relaxed way. Just cater to both instead of making content for one or the other (wich today is the case)

LunaFlora

Snamyap wrote: »

I know this comes as a shocker to some people but the vast majority of dungeons, including DLC ones, can already be soloed. There is only a handful that has unsurmountable group mechanics.
Yes, it requires a proper build and knowing how the game works. But if there are people who can solo dungeons on veteran mode, then you can most likely do it on normal. Especially now that we have companions, that are a lot more useful than some people are willing to give them credit for it.

this narrative mode would not require a "proper" build nor experience with the dungeons. which is why it would be good

Snamyap

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

I know this comes as a shocker to some people but the vast majority of dungeons, including DLC ones, can already be soloed. There is only a handful that has unsurmountable group mechanics.
Yes, it requires a proper build and knowing how the game works. But if there are people who can solo dungeons on veteran mode, then you can most likely do it on normal. Especially now that we have companions, that are a lot more useful than some people are willing to give them credit for it.

Yes, it's very possible, but ESO has a pretty large skill gap, instead of dancing around that they should embrace it. Add a narrative mode for dungeons, and at the same time add a veteran mode for zone story quests and other story-based content.

The fact just remains that with all the rotations, weaving and more or less complex stat calculations there's people who excel at combat, while others just want to experience combat in a more relaxed way. Just cater to both instead of making content for one or the other (wich today is the case)

I'm not opposed to the idea, though I don't see either story mode dungeons or veteran overland happening. My point is more that I get the idea that some people never even try or give up right away when they die in a glass canon build. It really isn't that hard, start easy with base game dungeons, you might just surprise yourself.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/632967/appreciation-thread-impaired-player-first-solo-trifecta-fg1-thanks-devs#latest

Aardappelboom

Snamyap wrote: »

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Snamyap wrote: »

I know this comes as a shocker to some people but the vast majority of dungeons, including DLC ones, can already be soloed. There is only a handful that has unsurmountable group mechanics.
Yes, it requires a proper build and knowing how the game works. But if there are people who can solo dungeons on veteran mode, then you can most likely do it on normal. Especially now that we have companions, that are a lot more useful than some people are willing to give them credit for it.

Yes, it's very possible, but ESO has a pretty large skill gap, instead of dancing around that they should embrace it. Add a narrative mode for dungeons, and at the same time add a veteran mode for zone story quests and other story-based content.

The fact just remains that with all the rotations, weaving and more or less complex stat calculations there's people who excel at combat, while others just want to experience combat in a more relaxed way. Just cater to both instead of making content for one or the other (wich today is the case)

I'm not opposed to the idea, though I don't see either story mode dungeons or veteran overland happening. My point is more that I get the idea that some people never even try or give up right away when they die in a glass canon build. It really isn't that hard, start easy with base game dungeons, you might just surprise yourself.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/632967/appreciation-thread-impaired-player-first-solo-trifecta-fg1-thanks-devs#latest

Don't get me wrong I completely agree, I do vet dungeons solo and have a lot of fun with that, in fact I love it, the stories feel so much better as you slowly progress through the dungeon.

I'm just saying that this tiered content approach is weird. Sure it's nice that there's "something for everyone" but I don't know about you, but I like my games to be a complete experience.

The dungeons and overland content story quests blend in very nicely, it's actually very well done, but when you're experienced the story quest falls flat, when you're not experienced, more often than not you skip the dungeons.

The skill gap isn't going away, the combat team firmly stated that weaving is a mechanic they embrace, so instead of trying to have different kinds of content that cater to different playstyles, they should just have a clear vision on difficulty for the entire game.

Same goes with the new bastions, devs stated these were more challenging as an answer to people asking for more difficult overland content. That's just a weird way to scale a zone, let a zone be a zone and allow players to somehow play in a difficulty setting they enjoy, for both, dungeons, overland, trials, etc...

I don't want this thread to go into overland too much as there's a topic for that, but I do think the skill gap issue is the reason why people ask for story dungeons, and I can actually understand that, even thoug I solo these myself.

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Dungeons, Trials & Arenas section, as it is better suited there.

Thank you for your understanding.

Jamaroo172

ZOS_Icy wrote: »

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Dungeons, Trials & Arenas section, as it is better suited there.

Thank you for your understanding.

Many thanks for moving to the right section!

As for everyone else, it is interesting to see the various amounts of feedback! always good to see people sharing opinions!