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The issues with group content in ESO
I_Luminosa
Soul Shriven
I want to preface this by saying that I love the group content that this game has to offer but the intention behind the way certain content was developed with feels dated or poor by todays standards.
Elder Scrolls isn't like WoW, for instance, in what kinds of people play the game. Most people who play WoW are playing an MMO but a lot of people who play ESO are playing an Elder Scrolls game - they're playing solo, or playing for the story and the zones. Not necessarily for the dungeons or PvP. So the idea behind making an activity like Bastion Nymics a forced group activity is exclusionary to a lot of people. It also falls in line with how dungeons are becoming, due to the overarching philosophy of ESO being that ALL content is relevant and at the same level of difficulty which is hurting the game in my opinion.
Queuing up for a specific dungeon because you want to farm a specific item set, work on an achievement, or just play it because you want to can take a long time. I queued up for a dungeon recently and quit the game when it hit 60 minutes to play something else where after spending an hour in that game I accomplished much more than just running around harvesting resources with a YouTube vid open on the other monitor. Content like dungeons is stacking on top of eachother. 40+ dungeons, though technically 80 if we consider normal and veteran versions in the dungeon finder. Is this sustainable for years to come?
Another thing I'd like to touch on is general world content. Is all content from all zones in the game really at the same level as each other in terms of difficulty? Are base game zones at the same level as Necrom zones? Delves? World bosses? World events?
I can complain and I can moan, but in all honesty I've quit the game...for now. I love this game but I hate the waiting, the way the ideas behind a lot of elements of this game are at odds with each other.
We get one dungeon in one update that's of a sort of medium-level with its difficulty with 3-4 mechanics per boss, then in another we get a hard-level difficulty dungeon with 6 mechanics on the final boss. This isn't the issue. The issue is that these dungeons are bunched in together with every other dungeon in the game. Normal difficulty and vet difficulty with no indication on how experienced of a player you should be to do certain dungeons.
Bastion Nymics shouldn't be forced group content. No open-world content should have forced group content. I'd also argue that in the modern era of MMOs that most content, at-least a solid 80%, should be soloable...but scales in difficulty for each person grouped with and has incentives to play with other people. This is how to do group content right. Make people WANT to interact with other people. Make it their choice.
"Hey, Bastion Nymic drops less loot, blue gear, and has a 5% chance to drop an antiquity lead if I do it solo, but if I do it in a group of 4 I get double the loot, purple drops and a 20% chance for a lead."
Back to dungeons - I think the older dungeons in the game need to be off-loaded so to speak. Dungeons at least 5-6 years old should become soloable with scaling difficulty based on if you're in a group with maybe the same kind of incentives I listed above as an example on how to keep groups doing this content.
In the future, conversations should be had surrounding trials, but not at the moment as there's significantly less compared to dungeons.
All of this is of course my opinion, but for the last few years its felt as though the MMO player-base of ESO has been declining steadily. The solo players and the players who play for the story and world content are seemingly always growing, which is kind of what prompted me to write all of this. I'm an 'everything' kind of player. I like doing all the world-content, dungeons, trials, arenas, PvP, Tales of Tribute etc. and I can see what parts of the game are more populated than other parts. ESO is the MMORPG that feels like the hub for the solo player, which is why I'm definitely surprised that some dungeons haven't been offloaded to be solo or that Bastion Nymic was made as forced-group activity. Think of all three versions of the world event put together into one - wouldn't that have been a great solo arena?
I digress, an MMO should always have group content, but it should be meaningful. I have 2,000hrs in FFXIV, I've done a lot of Savage Raids and even doing the same one over and over feels so satisfying and rewarding. Queuing for a dungeon for an hour and you don't get in so you play another game for the same amount of time and accomplish a lot is not meaningful. It's also not meaningful to have a dungeon boss have the same amount of mechanics as a Mythic+ raid boss from WoW in some instances and drop a crafting motif that you could've just bought from a guild trader. Seriously, follow the FFXIV formula of creating boss fights.
But, I'll end this little rant by saying that things need to change with ESO moving forward. How sustainable is the kind of content that's being made. The amount of dungeons stacking on top of each-other or Bastion Nymics being an activity that require 4 people - good luck filling those groups for your dailies in two years.
Well, thanks for reading, Adventurer. You made it to the end of the short novel
Elder Scrolls isn't like WoW, for instance, in what kinds of people play the game. Most people who play WoW are playing an MMO but a lot of people who play ESO are playing an Elder Scrolls game - they're playing solo, or playing for the story and the zones. Not necessarily for the dungeons or PvP. So the idea behind making an activity like Bastion Nymics a forced group activity is exclusionary to a lot of people. It also falls in line with how dungeons are becoming, due to the overarching philosophy of ESO being that ALL content is relevant and at the same level of difficulty which is hurting the game in my opinion.
Queuing up for a specific dungeon because you want to farm a specific item set, work on an achievement, or just play it because you want to can take a long time. I queued up for a dungeon recently and quit the game when it hit 60 minutes to play something else where after spending an hour in that game I accomplished much more than just running around harvesting resources with a YouTube vid open on the other monitor. Content like dungeons is stacking on top of eachother. 40+ dungeons, though technically 80 if we consider normal and veteran versions in the dungeon finder. Is this sustainable for years to come?
Another thing I'd like to touch on is general world content. Is all content from all zones in the game really at the same level as each other in terms of difficulty? Are base game zones at the same level as Necrom zones? Delves? World bosses? World events?
I can complain and I can moan, but in all honesty I've quit the game...for now. I love this game but I hate the waiting, the way the ideas behind a lot of elements of this game are at odds with each other.
We get one dungeon in one update that's of a sort of medium-level with its difficulty with 3-4 mechanics per boss, then in another we get a hard-level difficulty dungeon with 6 mechanics on the final boss. This isn't the issue. The issue is that these dungeons are bunched in together with every other dungeon in the game. Normal difficulty and vet difficulty with no indication on how experienced of a player you should be to do certain dungeons.
Bastion Nymics shouldn't be forced group content. No open-world content should have forced group content. I'd also argue that in the modern era of MMOs that most content, at-least a solid 80%, should be soloable...but scales in difficulty for each person grouped with and has incentives to play with other people. This is how to do group content right. Make people WANT to interact with other people. Make it their choice.
"Hey, Bastion Nymic drops less loot, blue gear, and has a 5% chance to drop an antiquity lead if I do it solo, but if I do it in a group of 4 I get double the loot, purple drops and a 20% chance for a lead."
Back to dungeons - I think the older dungeons in the game need to be off-loaded so to speak. Dungeons at least 5-6 years old should become soloable with scaling difficulty based on if you're in a group with maybe the same kind of incentives I listed above as an example on how to keep groups doing this content.
In the future, conversations should be had surrounding trials, but not at the moment as there's significantly less compared to dungeons.
All of this is of course my opinion, but for the last few years its felt as though the MMO player-base of ESO has been declining steadily. The solo players and the players who play for the story and world content are seemingly always growing, which is kind of what prompted me to write all of this. I'm an 'everything' kind of player. I like doing all the world-content, dungeons, trials, arenas, PvP, Tales of Tribute etc. and I can see what parts of the game are more populated than other parts. ESO is the MMORPG that feels like the hub for the solo player, which is why I'm definitely surprised that some dungeons haven't been offloaded to be solo or that Bastion Nymic was made as forced-group activity. Think of all three versions of the world event put together into one - wouldn't that have been a great solo arena?
I digress, an MMO should always have group content, but it should be meaningful. I have 2,000hrs in FFXIV, I've done a lot of Savage Raids and even doing the same one over and over feels so satisfying and rewarding. Queuing for a dungeon for an hour and you don't get in so you play another game for the same amount of time and accomplish a lot is not meaningful. It's also not meaningful to have a dungeon boss have the same amount of mechanics as a Mythic+ raid boss from WoW in some instances and drop a crafting motif that you could've just bought from a guild trader. Seriously, follow the FFXIV formula of creating boss fights.
But, I'll end this little rant by saying that things need to change with ESO moving forward. How sustainable is the kind of content that's being made. The amount of dungeons stacking on top of each-other or Bastion Nymics being an activity that require 4 people - good luck filling those groups for your dailies in two years.
Well, thanks for reading, Adventurer. You made it to the end of the short novel
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