PTS Update 40 - Feedback Thread for Infinite Archive

RaptorRodeoGod

OtarTheMad wrote: »

OolongSnakeTea wrote: »

Even with the balance changes from the latest PTS Patch 9.2.2 -- of arc 1 vs arcs after arc 1 still feels punishing. I should not be punished for wanting to take a break for my game play. I should not feel like I'm glued to a chair because I have not been defeated. I just want to be able to log out, sleep maybe eat, then log back to where I was before. Like I can in other content such as vet-Maelstrom Area (no score) or vet-Vatashran Hallows (no score). I still get the loot and I don't break my hands over something.

I don't get why we are punishing players to grind so hard and force upon them unhealthy gaming habbits by making them play hours and hours on end to get deeper and deeper.

^ this

I don’t mind EA having a leaderboard, perfectly fine but you should have a no score option where you can save progress but with the sacrifice of a leaderboard score.

They should just do it the way Maelstrom does it. If you have the quest for the arena, you can go back to where you left off, but you forfeit your score when you leave the arena the first time.

mdjessup4906

I didn't notice, can you just keep your character in the archive after logging out? That could be a workaround for still being able to do leaderboard in stages instead of all at once. If you port out, your score run is over. It would also fix the issue of losing your score from a game crash.

The whole one-run thing works in vate and maelstrom because they both take under an hour to finish score-wise. It's not fair that the only people who will ever place in ea are those who can afford to no-life it.

NoxiousBlight

code65536 wrote: »

The Week 3 patch notes are disappointing.

I want to reiterate: YOU SHOULD ELIMINATE ONE OF THE STAGES PER CYCLE.

Exactly. While I appreciate it, I don't think speeding up Arc 1 by 10% is enough. It is the long term drag of endless trash packs that sucks the fun out of EA. Especially with buffs that feel useless because they only last one trash round.

The EA is just not rewarding enough. Especially not with the permanent buffs now costing upwards of 30k. With the rate of gain on fortunes by the time I purchase all the buffs I will probably never want to go in again.

If ZOS refuses to change anything that is really needed, such as adding a save or reducing trash packs, then they need to DOUBLE the rate of gain on fortunes. It is just such a slog.

Dagoth_Rac

The ramping up of difficulty is disappointing. A slow, steady increase in difficulty would have been a great way to keep players engaged if there was a save feature!

You get stuck on a stage, take a day or two to think about, go back and pick up where you left off. And hopefully beat it this time! And then move on to an Arc that is only slightly harder. So you are still challenged but likely don't feel overwhelmed. And maybe you will get stuck there, but you can come back when you feel up to it and try again. It would have allowed for very little slog through content that is too easy and boring and grindy, and a feeling of continual small, incremental victories and endless progress.

Yes, you don't want players to jump straight to the final boss of a dungeon or Trial and turn it into some 10 minute activity. But Endless Archive is different. No matter what Arc you jump to, you still have an infinite number of Arcs in front of you. If it doesn't end, it shouldn't matter where you start. It is still endless.

Now players will just hit a hard wall sooner and quickly get frustrated and tired and just stop going into EA. It will be obvious quickly that some Arc is too hard for that player. And how many times are you going to slog through the same 3 or 4 arcs just to get your face smashed in by the next arc? Too much time for too little reward. I don't even mean too little currency or gear rewards. I mean too little reward of engaging, fun gameplay.

It was such a perfect opportunity to keep players coming back to content that is almost perfectly fine-tuned to their skill level. Instead, it is turning into another relentless, sweaty, button mashing exercise.

J18696

Making the first arc easier isn't even remotely addressing the issue stages have no reward and just there to inflate time spent since verses are not permanent no loot for clearing them and marauders are still to over tuned in general

Tandor

The changes haven't altered the inability of non-elite players getting anything out of this. My 538CP templar and Mirri defeated the first boss but the step up after that meant the second boss wiped the floor with us almost immediately.

Trash and trivial content for some players is tough or impossible for other players, and we really need an official clarification as to what "the intended audience" is. For elite players you need to minimise any trash content but that instantly puts it outside the scope of any other players. Different difficulty options are really the only answer if you want it to maintain a broad appeal.

oogaboogaoogabooga

It feels like the most important part of the feedback was ignored or misunderstood, as usual. You haven't make it any less boring for players to go through mindless unrewarding grindy stages, you just made it even easier, (not shorter ), didn't know it was possible lol, that's some lazy adjusting, just reducing hp of adds&bosses.

And instead of balancing it out you just made it get harder quick without adjusting rewards, so now you will get even less cause you won't be able to push as as deep as before. Also increasing 5x of prices of all the buffs when it already feels unrewarding and grindy is just weird. I was looking forward to this content, made it to arc 11, but at current state I won't even touch it lol. Seems like it's another content to hop in and do daily quick for arc 1, like random normal dungeon. Dissapointed.

oogaboogaoogabooga

I really wonder who are these "intended audince" and why haven't you made a normal version for them to begin with that will be easy enough to complete with their eyes closed. Instead, you made it worse for both "intended audience" and "unintended" one.

DeathStalker

I think the best way to do the EA is a normal and a Vet mode. Make everything in the Normal version the same difficulty as the first arc is now or maybe even just a tad easier. In the Vet mode make everything harder with double the rewards as normal. Eliminate some trash fights and significantly increase the rewards to make it worth doing.

acastanza_ESO

The changes introduced in the patch today completely miss the point of all the feedback that was given about endless archive progression, even more importantly, when Gina gave the preview a couple days ago of the adjustments that would be in this patch we told you that they missed the point.
The issue was not how many arcs it took to ramp up in difficulty, it was the amount of time, in real hours that it takes to progress through the stages padded out as they are with multiple redundant add pulls, coupled with no way to resume progress if you need to leave but haven't died and been forced out.

James-Wayne

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

3). Exploration mode: No leaderboard. You go into a library and there are books you can read to take you to different arcs. The books will be unreadable if you have never reached that arc. If in a duo, you need to have both reached arc before for book to be readable. The books are just one possible UI. Maybe you have a Watcher NPC who lists arcs and choose the one to jump to based on dialog. A key point of this is you do not just pick up where you left off. You pick an arc to customize the difficulty to what you are in the mood for. Once you clear arc, you move on to next arc, but no matter how far you progress, it does not count toward leaderboard. You do not have a life/threads limit.

I LOVE this idea!! It would make the Endless Archive enjoyable to do over and over again and push to see how far you can go without the grind and leaderboards to tackle.

Toxic_Hemlock

After reading the notes for 9.2.2, I am even more secure in my belief that then NEED to implement normal and Vet modes. Hell even add a third mode that cannot access the leaderboard at all for the super casuals like myself.

You still have not addressed the lack of loot, nor the tediousness some players are feeling. Instead you made arc 1 easier and more or less made it into a "one and done" content, something the Devs should not have wasted time on IMO.

I'll add to the choir that it would be VERY nice if you just told us the intended audience, so we could choose to just skip it like I do with Bastion nymics. As it sits now it just seems you are trying to make it "something for everyone", and as someone that has seen vids online of elites players there is a HUGE GAP between player types.

flizomica

So... what's the point of making EA incredibly grindy and stingy with regards to the rewards if the class sets aren't even particularly good? I love a good RP set, but I can't see myself doing a grind that's worse than the Maelstrom stickerbook but also more difficult just for some mildly interesting VFX. Especially since I spend less and less time in the game actually engaging with the combat system considering what a mess balancing is overall.

swickelb16_ESO

Thanks for not using any feedback. EA is dead now. Let's hope you will fix it in a few years.

OtarTheMad

swickelb16_ESO wrote: »

Thanks for not using any feedback. EA is dead now. Let's hope you will fix it in a few years.

As a necromancer user, I laughed so hard when I saw "a few years". Good luck with it being adjusted/fixed before TES 6.

chessalavakia_ESO

I redid the first section to test it on a quickie template NB char solo using Soul Carver + Sergeant's Mail + Prior Theric.

It is a bit easier now but, it's still probably harder than soloing many of the games group dungeons.

I would note that the solo leaderboard might not be working right at the moment.

flizomica wrote: »

So... what's the point of making EA incredibly grindy and stingy with regards to the rewards if the class sets aren't even particularly good? I love a good RP set, but I can't see myself doing a grind that's worse than the Maelstrom stickerbook but also more difficult just for some mildly interesting VFX. Especially since I spend less and less time in the game actually engaging with the combat system considering what a mess balancing is overall.

I think they thought that EA would be fun for players and that players would enjoy gradually grinding it all out over a few months and then they could add more sets for people to earn.

I could be mistaken but, I think many of us that are testing it are running solo/with a companion. The content might actually play better with two players than it does solo/with a companion.

RicAlmighty

These latest changes to EA have essentially guaranteed that I will not spend any time doing it on the live servers. The change to the difficulty level completely misses the point that was being made in this thread. We wanted less waves, not accelerated difficulty. As it is now you've tuned it such that most of the players of this game will not have an Endless Archive, they will have an Endless Arc 1. Because they will never be able to progress past that level. With the effectively non-existent rewards they will receive and the exorbitant prices that the vendor has now, why would anyone choose to waste their time in this activity when they could be doing something that is both more fun and more rewarding?

This activity is shaping up to be DOA unless Zos starts actually listening to the players here.

ESO_Nightingale

Unfortunately as far as i can see, this patch started off great and has drastically gotten worse as the incrementals have gone by. We have recieved very few balance changes this update due to the content being worked on, this is somewhat understandable, However, not only is there very little reward to be earned from the Endless Archive due to most of the class sets being frankly useless, but also the content has now gotten even harder, ignoring the crutial feedback from people who farmed it on pts for weeks for nothing but just to test it. Now there's been a few changes that have severely dampened the experience for seemingly no reason. Why is the build change npc suddenly not allowed in content that is NOT timed? This literally extends the problem that people have, in that it takes way too long to get through arcs. People want to enjoy the content. By listening to their suggestions to reduce the amount of annoying trash it makes the experience less grindy. More grind is bad and grates away the enjoyment to be had from this potentially exciting new content or even sphere of endgame.

Going back to rewards and the class sets, there needs to be drastic plans immediately to ensure that these item sets are worth it. most of them are bad and some have design or audience targeting problems like Gardener of Seasons and other sets are woefully undertuned such as Monolith of Storms. this is the kind of feedback we need to see addressed as soon as possible, there are very few weeks left until this patch will be finalised. I'm gonna say it but i legitimately think that all of the class sets should be tuned to be strong and fun first and then addressed later. We don't have the luxury of time to make them balanced before live. there needs to be good gear related rewards from this place. If this cannot be achieved, we'll be left with another Torghast situation like what happened with World of Warcraft. Please do not make the same mistakes. Time is running out and people's patience regarding this patch is rapidly dwindling.

Lazy_Voyager

Juice absolutely does not look worth the squeeze now. Maybe this will get a rebalance patch in a year or something.

Jaimeh

I can understand why the save feature would be tricky given the fact that there can be two players, but why can't they just remove a trash pack round to make things move along swifter? Is there a technical reason they can't do it, or is it because they simply want to keep the format as is?

KlauthWarthog

... yeah, if this thing is mostly rounds of bullet sponge trash mobs with the occasional boss fight sprinkled in, I will give it a wide berth.

prof_doom

Just here to leave my agreement that what I (and a lot of guildmates who don't use the forum) want is:

• Less trash rounds between bosses
• Ability to save progress

Overall, while I understand it's an endless archive, the average playtime session for a lot of people is about 2 hours, and right now it doesn't really feel like this is designed with that idea in mind.

Tandor

@ZOS_Kevin Would it be possible please for you or someone to tell us what "the intended audience" referred to in the patch notes is?

FantasticFreddie

Yeah, and the consistent feedback of the rewards aren't good was ignored.

I'm a warden healer main. I'm not going to respec a toon and farm 10+ hours for a healer set that isn'teven that good.

They could have given it major toughness. Wasted opportunity

kojou

Jaimeh wrote: »

I can understand why the save feature would be tricky given the fact that there can be two players, but why can't they just remove a trash pack round to make things move along swifter? Is there a technical reason they can't do it, or is it because they simply want to keep the format as is?

I wonder this as well. Maybe they have something about the order of stages hard coded and it would be difficult to pull apart and fix the bugs it causes before this patch goes live.

It could also be that the designer has "a vision" and is insisting it should be this way, and won't be convinced to change it until they see that participation with Endless Archive is lower than they had hoped.

Not sure which it is, but those are my running theories.

RaddlemanNumber7

v9.2.2

More fun, more reward, but still hard work for me.

Used a Hybrid templar with archer Miri.

I got to 1:5:4 before Tho'at killed me. I think that's about as good as it gets for me, unless that first Tho'at gets nerfed.

I received 1100 AF and 2893 gold. It took about an hour total.

I'll wait and see what the Leaderboard rewards are.

I can see me doing this maybe once a week, otherwise it'll get boring fast.

2 side quests: I defeated the duelling Arcanist, but failed on the lighted altars and sprint past tentacles one (which seems to be an APM check, my weak point).

CameraBeardThePirate

Imagine receiving tons and tons of detailed feedback citing the exact problems players have, and then ignoring it to push changes that make the problems worse.

Aka_

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Imagine receiving tons and tons of detailed feedback citing the exact problems players have, and then ignoring it to push changes that make the problems worse.

I've noticed that PTS feedback is notoriously ignored. They have a vision and are just going through the motions. The grind in this to get to further Arcs is insane to me. Most roguelikes aim for 60-90 minutes of intense entertaining fun and combos. This is just a slow, trash sponge slog. I'm not entertained by it in the slightest when the trash mobs are so... boring.

This is not the exploration-interest dungeon full of rewarding mechanics we were interested in. It takes forever, and the main adjustment they made is health on adds scales higher faster, and they hit SLIGHTLY harder than they used to. But the bosses felt the same.

I don't know who there thought this was a good balance state with still 60-80% of your time spent in trash packs. No one wanted the trash to be spongier, but that's all we got. This is missing the mark and ZoS can do better than this.

Entaro

So I just did a run of Endless Archive with the new PTS week 3 changes. For reference my character was an Orc Stam Arcanist wearing Ansuul, Deadly, 1pc Mighty Chudan, Ring of Pale Order, and Backbar Maelstrom Inferno Staff. My frontbar weapons were 1H+Shield for the extra tankiness but otherwise a parse setup. Using Pragmatic Fatecarver. Offensive blue CP's, Bistat food and Prismatic glyphs on the Helm/Chest/Legs, had around 26k HP, 27K armor and 16-18k Penetration most of the time.

Reached Arc 3-4-5 where I died and the run ended, Took me 49 minutes to get to this point. What I'm noticing is that the damage done by enemies now scales extremely heavily, even on this setup I am runnning which I would consider moderately tanky. Beginning in later cycles of Arc 2, blocking became useless for any kinds of special attacks like Uppercut, rolling became mandatory.

The trash pack stages are now IMO the most difficult part of Endless Archive in my opinion due to all of the incoming damage. Even with my tanky setup with Pale Order, Pragmatic Fatecarver, high armor and prioritizing defensive verses where possible, I absolutely had the hardest time on the later trashpack stages in Arc 2 and 3, overall, compared to boss stages.

I don't know if I necessarily dislike this change, but I still believe that there are overall way too many trashpack stages in general, especially now that they are so relatively dangerous.

prof-dracko

This is fascinating. They've introduced new things before that people didn't like, but this is the first time the opinion has been so overwhelmingly negative. Like some others have said, they've likely committed to the concept already and were never planning on changing much, if anything. PTS, for all its merits, is a very small sample size of the player base. It's mostly here for bug fixes, not really beta testing. Once it goes live and more and more players start expressing their disappointment, THEN we'll get some proper changes. Eventually.