„Time is money“ - the unbalanced relationship between time spent and rewards

Lugaldu

In my opinion, the last innovation in the game that can be done quickly if there are enough players on site and offers an appropriate reward was the volcanic vents. Everything else has a tendency to become more and more time-consuming and at the same time not worth it in relation to the time spent. ToT, Bastion Nymic and now the EA…

What is the impulse for this? I mean, there are enough players whose playing time is perhaps limited to 1-2 hours in the evening and who have no opportunity to spend hours grinding through such time-consuming content and who therefore have virtually no opportunity to ever get certain items. Sure, if you get something "too easy" then it loses its appeal and is no longer anything special or a challenge, but I find the ratio between time spent and reward more and more frustrating.

Danikat

What are the items players can't get without completing these events?

Genuine question BTW, from someone trying to understand the problem. I'm one of the people who can only play for an hour or two in the evening so my thinking is I'd do things like volcanic vents once (maybe once per vent) when I get an opportunity so I've played through the content, then skip it if it's too much trouble to do again because I'm never going to run out of things to do and don't need to resort to grinding the same things over and over, so it's not a problem for me if something isn't easy to grind.

But then I realised I don't actually know what exclusive rewards come from it, I've never looked and don't typically think about doing things for the sake of getting specific rewards. It might still not be a problem for players like me, but it's hard to know when I literally don't know what I'm missing.

Lugaldu

Danikat wrote: »

What are the items players can't get without completing these events?

Genuine question BTW, from someone trying to understand the problem. I'm one of the people who can only play for an hour or two in the evening so my thinking is I'd do things like volcanic vents once (maybe once per vent) when I get an opportunity so I've played through the content, then skip it if it's too much trouble to do again because I'm never going to run out of things to do and don't need to resort to grinding the same things over and over, so it's not a problem for me if something isn't easy to grind.

But then I realised I don't actually know what exclusive rewards come from it, I've never looked and don't typically think about doing things for the sake of getting specific rewards. It might still not be a problem for players like me, but it's hard to know when I literally don't know what I'm missing.

One example would be the lead for the new music box which drops from ToT reward boxes and the rewards in general. Some people have "luck" and have to play "only" 50 rounds until the get the lead, I have played probably 150 rounds and got nothing. And to make it even worse, you spend so much time with e.g. the card game, but what do we get from that? 80 gold and 5 mushrooms? I mean, thats ridiculous.

Aorys

best reward are the friends and enemies we make on the way

TybaltKaine

Keeping the numbers up. That's the impetus for this. Design time consuming content so that at any given point the active players online meets a certain threshold.

The game doesn't respect your time, 90% of games don't. They want you to spend all of your spare time in their walled garden. This is just the least subtle way of doing so.

Carcamongus

How about killing a WB an average of 4 times per day during the Telvanni event (and over 10 times on the last full day) to get a grand total of zero leads? I've come to detest that Nightmare boss so deeply because of this lead I'm actually starting to become fond of it. Don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either.

RNGeesus is proving to be more diabolical than Molag Bal after stubbing his toe on the bed.

Danikat

Lugaldu wrote: »

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Danikat wrote: »

What are the items players can't get without completing these events?

Genuine question BTW, from someone trying to understand the problem. I'm one of the people who can only play for an hour or two in the evening so my thinking is I'd do things like volcanic vents once (maybe once per vent) when I get an opportunity so I've played through the content, then skip it if it's too much trouble to do again because I'm never going to run out of things to do and don't need to resort to grinding the same things over and over, so it's not a problem for me if something isn't easy to grind.

But then I realised I don't actually know what exclusive rewards come from it, I've never looked and don't typically think about doing things for the sake of getting specific rewards. It might still not be a problem for players like me, but it's hard to know when I literally don't know what I'm missing.

One example would be the lead for the new music box which drops from ToT reward boxes and the rewards in general. Some people have "luck" and have to play "only" 50 rounds until the get the lead, I have played probably 150 rounds and got nothing. And to make it even worse, you spend so much time with e.g. the card game, but what do we get from that? 80 gold and 5 mushrooms? I mean, thats ridiculous.

Oh, yeah my reaction to things like that would be to assume I'll never get the reward and forget about it.

Which works for me because, as I said, I don't play for the rewards and I'm a casual player who assumed when I started that I'd never get everything or keep up with the top players. But I can see how it would be annoying for people who really want that specific item, and if ZOS designed it with the intention of giving players an incentive to keep farming those events it completely backfires.

sarahthes

Carcamongus wrote: »

How about killing a WB an average of 4 times per day during the Telvanni event (and over 10 times on the last full day) to get a grand total of zero leads? I've come to detest that Nightmare boss so deeply because of this lead I'm actually starting to become fond of it. Don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either.

RNGeesus is proving to be more diabolical than Molag Bal after stubbing his toe on the bed.

You definitely do have awful rng. I got somewhere between 15-20 leads during the event, between world bosses, delve bosses, nodes, treasure maps and treasure chests.

dk_dunkirk

Carcamongus wrote: »

How about killing a WB an average of 4 times per day during the Telvanni event (and over 10 times on the last full day) to get a grand total of zero leads? I've come to detest that Nightmare boss so deeply because of this lead I'm actually starting to become fond of it. Don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either.

RNGeesus is proving to be more diabolical than Molag Bal after stubbing his toe on the bed.

From a game design point of view, if I was responsible for this algorithm, I would program an "else" clause in the "if-then" statement. If management decided that the drop rate for something was, say, 1 in 100, I'd have it automatically drop if it was your 100th time, and hadn't seen it yet. (Subsequent drops would bypass the "else" clause.) Seems a very simple way to fix these kinds of complaints.

boi_anachronism_

Carcamongus wrote: »

How about killing a WB an average of 4 times per day during the Telvanni event (and over 10 times on the last full day) to get a grand total of zero leads? I've come to detest that Nightmare boss so deeply because of this lead I'm actually starting to become fond of it. Don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either.

RNGeesus is proving to be more diabolical than Molag Bal after stubbing his toe on the bed.

Thats how i felt about ToT. Its called Stockholm syndrome

Enemy-of-Coldharbour

I agree with OP. I posted not long ago that I soloed Bastion Nymic and did all the puzzles and their bosses in one run. It took a huge amount of time and effort and all I got was a few pieces of decon and not enough gold to even buy a beer. I should have at least got the lead from there.

AcadianPaladin

I actually like the fact that a lot of hard/time consuming stuff doesn't come with 'Oh Wow!' rewards. That makes it easy to pass on things like Bastion Nymic, when my elf would much rather ride her precious mare (at a walk) along the beach in northwest Auridon where the guaranteed reward is being completely wrapped in the beautiful music, sound of lapping waves and beautiful scenery.

Pelanora

Carcamongus wrote: »

How about killing a WB an average of 4 times per day during the Telvanni event (and over 10 times on the last full day) to get a grand total of zero leads? I've come to detest that Nightmare boss so deeply because of this lead I'm actually starting to become fond of it. Don't ask me, it doesn't make sense to me either.

RNGeesus is proving to be more diabolical than Molag Bal after stubbing his toe on the bed.

Stockholm Syndrome!


As someone else said lol. I'm impressed that manifested in a game.

Vrelanier

Maybe there could be lead fragments, that if you try 300 times for one lead and haven't gotten it, then you can build the lead from the 300 fragments you did get. They could be a currency, so they don't take up bag space. There could be a limited amount you can carry at a time, so you can't just sit on millions and then one day make all the leads. There could also be a cooldown on how often you can use them, and perhaps a limit on how many pieces you can use on a single antiquity. The number of fragments needed could be different for every lead.

One way to make sure that people still do the assigned activity is to make it so that the player has to "unlock" a lead, and only then be able to use the fragments on it. With ToT, it could be 10 games (wins or losses). So that you still have to do the activity for a while and see what it's like. You could unlock the ToT part in 10 days, assuming you can play one game of ToT a night. After that, you could get the fragments from doing something else that still makes sense in the context of the antiquity.

I think it shouldn't be a lot easier with the fragments, than with the drops, but if someone really has atrocious luck, or has a really hard time doing certain activities, then they can comfort themselves with knowing they will get the lead eventually, and they can actually already see it happening, because the number of fragments is growing. They are still playing the game and actively working towards a goal, within the theme of the antiquity.

Spoiler

Personally I'm a casual, I like luck a lot, and I haven't found anything in ESO to be a grind, so fragments wouldn't make that much of a difference to me.
But if they were a thing, I would 100% use them on the lead that comes from ToT.

Lugaldu

Vrelanier wrote: »

Maybe there could be lead fragments, that if you try 300 times for one lead and haven't gotten it, then you can build the lead from the 300 fragments you did get. They could be a currency, so they don't take up bag space. There could be a limited amount you can carry at a time, so you can't just sit on millions and then one day make all the leads. There could also be a cooldown on how often you can use them, and perhaps a limit on how many pieces you can use on a single antiquity. The number of fragments needed could be different for every lead.

One way to make sure that people still do the assigned activity is to make it so that the player has to "unlock" a lead, and only then be able to use the fragments on it. With ToT, it could be 10 games (wins or losses). So that you still have to do the activity for a while and see what it's like. You could unlock the ToT part in 10 days, assuming you can play one game of ToT a night. After that, you could get the fragments from doing something else that still makes sense in the context of the antiquity.

I think it shouldn't be a lot easier with the fragments, than with the drops, but if someone really has atrocious luck, or has a really hard time doing certain activities, then they can comfort themselves with knowing they will get the lead eventually, and they can actually already see it happening, because the number of fragments is growing. They are still playing the game and actively working towards a goal, within the theme of the antiquity.

Spoiler

Personally I'm a casual, I like luck a lot, and I haven't found anything in ESO to be a grind, so fragments wouldn't make that much of a difference to me.
But if they were a thing, I would 100% use them on the lead that comes from ToT.

The idea with the lead fragments is certainly not bad, but please not 300 fragments... It's enough if you have to collect 50 fragments for some other things. And if you still haven't gotten the lead after 300 attempts (I'm getting closer to that with the ToT lead...), then there's something wrong with the drop rate anyway.