If the archive is endless, why am I expected to just do as much as possible in one sitting?

DinoZavr

oh. forgot to mention. "SAVE = NO LEADERBOARD" is also a reasonable approach if we are THAT pedantic

MidniteOwl1913

jaws343 wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

returning to Mike Finnigan in the SkinnyCheeks interview (timestamp 28:35)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ily2xhGU6HA&t=1715s

SkinnyCheeks has asked if game-makers can not provide with saving progress, or just don't want to?

Mike answered:
At the moment we don't want. there is so much tied into that progression in doing everything
There is a build up of Visions, there is build up of Versus
There is also exploitation behaviors, that you can get into if you have two people in there
and they are saving progress and they branch out and they get two more people and everybody jump
it becomes this never ending wormhole of trying to solve potential bugs

Thank you, both Mike and SkinnyCheeks. That is a great improvement of players-developers communications!


Well.. the absence of saving progress and the inability to skip early levels are two big (in my opinion) design flaws.
And, considering saving/restoring are just two tiny moments i still don't understand how this can be exploited.

Save:
at the very beginning of cycle 1 stage 1 in a given Arc both players exit into the hall and stand on two specially designed pressure plates designated with color or sign. Thus they save the group progress. Saved are remaining threads, visions and versus for each of two. (save before Arc 1 is unnecessary as this is provided by resetting the instance)
Restore:
when the same characters enter the Endless archive, they climb on the "restore" plates marked with the color or sign (situated far from the "save" pressure plates) and game restores the saved state
Other considerations:
saves expire in 30 days (or a week or leaderboard reset)
interval between restores can be set on 15 .. 60 minutes cooldown
same (interval) should be actual for saving, though later save with the same team should overwrite the previous one

(yes, this will require expanding the databases, making a separate on for EA saves, but its volume should not be serious,
just assign each save a unique ID and add and link players characters to the saves they made).

It is even possible for player to have multiple saves (solo and with different partners), though theirs number can be limited to prevent the database uncotrolled growth.
Deleting team saves: not possible. be picky whom you save your raid with. there is the expiration, remember?

what exploits are possible?
to prevent saving right before Tho'at stage (for farming class-specific gear) saves are to be made before stage 1 cycle 1
renaming characters does not affect saves, as CharacterID is recorded, not characters' name
deleting character involved is saves will make save restoration impossible, so this saved states will eventually expire

as for changing players in a team - this is not a "saves" issue, right the opposite: you can not restore the save unless both "original" (e.g. involved in save) are standing on the plates
players change the team composition before save (for carries and such) - game records the group membership at the moment the first damage done at stage 1 cycle 1 - and will not save if players characters changed during the Arc progress.

The scenario two capable players reach 4-4-2 (maybe other stages) and then one of them is replaced by the carry - for the Achievement (or both are replaced by the "tourists". i guess that is what Mike meant) can be done without saving progress, though the saves will shorten the process. how "dangerous" is that for the game health? in my opinion this hardly affects the grand scheme of things seriously. Carries are reality, not only in ESO but in other MMOs.
Generally speaking - is this the real reason not to implement EA saves?


what had i missed?


also game should allow skipping Arcs (like after both players done them 20 or 25 times) as capable players would like to jump into the difficulty they are happy with, not spending time on the content which they consider too easy. In this case game might offer them to start without visions, or offer a random set of visions.
(though saving game with a proper partner resolves most of that. Skips might be optative when two endgame pros enter the dungeon for the first time (for theirs newly composed team), or one of both have exausted theirs saves limits)

It would be really awesome if @ZOS_Finn addresses players considerations and communicated the possible improvements of Endless Archive, as there are things that definitely can be improved.

edit: quotation from Youtube interview may be imprecise. English is not my mother-tongue, sorry for that

Well, you missed the part where those two players can leave the archive, go farm specific sets for specific arcs, or craft specific sets that fully take advantage of the specific buffs they received during the run. You'll notice, there are zero crafting stations in the archive. The intent is, you have your bank space and your character inventory to prepare as much as possible for a run. If you don't have a specific set, or don't have skill morph scrolls, then you cannot optimize and the run is more random. Which is the point.

Not having a save prevents people from completely changing their builds, morphs and all, at random points in the archive. You can only adjust what you went in prepared to adjust.

A good example of this. One of the builds I was running through had the wrong morph of weakness to elements. So, I had to use another skill to take advantage of focused efforts during that run. My poor planning, meant that the attempt was sub-optimal.

You can I and I have bought skill respec scrolls in the crown store. I usually have one in my bank just in case. Expensive but doable. PC's have an addon that does what the armory system does. I have enough bank space and resources to hold just about whatever I think I might need. Foods, potions, sets... So I'm not sure any of your points are valid.

DinoZavr

about respecs and assistants (merchant and banker are working inside EA)
- decon assistant works inside EA, though leaving Archive for a short while to decon overland set drops is possible
- merchant assistant is generally not required, as little filers buy things and repair players gear
- using banker is good (though not required often) and the main purpose is to extract something you need from the bank, rather than place anything there. without banker crafted and overland gear can be exchanged with a friend via ingame mail, for example, i can politely ask my friend to mail be reinforced Orders' Wrath cuirass with tri-stat enchant not leaving the archive, or leaving EA for a short minute to access the real bank and Guild banks
- armory - it would be great if Zenimax deploy Armory Station in the Endless Archive index, as changing Mundus is possible if you leave EA for less than 5 minutes just to change the mundus stone (for example in a Guildhall). So players with Armory Assistant might be able to respec not leaving the field, while others would do that by exiting to the portal index (if game-makers deploy the Armory there (similarly to Cyrodiil/IC Sewers)).

it would be fine if Zeni deploys Armory Station in the Archive Index and allow Armory Assistant for those who has them.

M0ntie

Yup. I'm not really interested in doing much EA because I can't save. I don't have hours at a stretch to play, and tbh spending hours doing the same thing sounds boring.
They can always restrict the number of saves and the length of time a save is kept.
Also what is the problem with using the Outfit station during EA, trials etc? PC can use dressing room & wizard's wardrobe so why not give Console the ability to change their setup easily too?

Please ZoS implement saves.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom

The first week, I got #1 on the Solo Sorcerer leaderboard. Then I ran Arc 1 and 2 on repeat until I got all the Sorcerer set pieces. Even with an Azureblight build to speedrun non-boss stages, the later Arcs still take too long.

Endless Archive score pushing is super unhealthy and ZOS should not design game systems that require destroying your body to compete with other players. People end up in the hospital or die.

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/eldrca/our_guldie_is_in_hospital_now_trying_to_grind/

We've just found out that our guildie (original post got removed because of his name) who I will call Mr. S has been sent to hospital with severe fatigue and an irregular heartbeat. We knew he had been grinding hard and had been focused on getting to rank 10+ in a short amount of time. Apparently he hadn't slept for over 96 hours. He won't even reach the rank he wants cause he's been purely playing soloq.

https://venturebeat.com/games/man-dies-after-19-hour-world-of-warcraft-session/

A Chinese gamer has died after sitting and playing World of Warcraft for a 19-hour stretch without taking a break.

Wu Tai, 24, collapsed in an unnamed Internet cafe in Shanghai during a marathon session of the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, reports The Mirror. Paramedics attending the scene tried to resuscitate Wu, but he was already dead.

TwiceBornStar

Exploding Bantam Guars!

Say hello to my little friend..

Elyu

Roxy wrote: »

Since I can travel out of maelstrom and vateshran and come back to finish it the next day so long as I’m okay with forfeiting the leaderboard, I don’t understand why the ‘endless’ challenge would be the one that limits you to a single sitting of gameplay. I was looking forward to a challenge of being able to see how far I could possibly get on the back of my own skill rather than how long I can sit and stare at my screen for. Anyone else think it would be nice to be able to load out of the archive and still jump back in at the level you left off at providing that you didn’t lose all of your lives or manually reset it?

Agree!

Also your comment contains the solution for ZOS within it; add a mechanic to 'save progress', but you are only eligible for the leaderboards if you start from the beginning.

Elsonso

Elyu wrote: »

Roxy wrote: »

Since I can travel out of maelstrom and vateshran and come back to finish it the next day so long as I’m okay with forfeiting the leaderboard, I don’t understand why the ‘endless’ challenge would be the one that limits you to a single sitting of gameplay. I was looking forward to a challenge of being able to see how far I could possibly get on the back of my own skill rather than how long I can sit and stare at my screen for. Anyone else think it would be nice to be able to load out of the archive and still jump back in at the level you left off at providing that you didn’t lose all of your lives or manually reset it?

Agree!

Also your comment contains the solution for ZOS within it; add a mechanic to 'save progress', but you are only eligible for the leaderboards if you start from the beginning.

That is the solution, but to do it, they have to save the character's state and progress. Maybe not as trivial as it sounds, but certainly something I could see them doing in a future update.

ajkb78

ArchMikem wrote: »

It had the idea of being a type of Arena. Apparently there's leaderboards for it too, so even if it's endless, it's meant to test how far you can achieve in one go, like a score, not as a progression.

It already tests how far you can go before losing all your threads, that should be enough. Testing how little of a life you have outside the game (and therefore how long you can play in one sitting) is a bit crappy, at least for solo players. With the current focus on QOL improvements I'm surprised something like this slipped through, it just seems obvious. You can complete a vet trial in an hour, usually 2 hours is the time most guilds allocate for prog runs and it has been like that as long as I can remember. I know that's players deciding how long they want to spend but that's the point - it's very consistently 2 hours, which suggests that for many players that is about the length of time they can spend in one sitting. That's the audience. So activities like EA that by necessity go way beyond 2 hours (I gather some of the score pushers who reach double digit arcs played for more than 12 hours in a sitting to do so) really, really ought to have a means of saving progress.

There's already a mechanism for this via the quest - if I remember right, the "save which arena you've reached" was added to Maelstrom Arena via the quest, so the same thing could presumably be added to the EA quest. If leaderboards are the issue, just do what happens in Maelstrom and your score vanishes into Oblivion if you log out for long enough to have to restart from the quest save point, but really even that seems a bit unnecessary for this content.

Mathius_Mordred

This is such an obvious requirement I am sure it will be added soon.

DinoZavr

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

This is such an obvious requirement I am sure it will be added soon.

only if the majority of players is persistent, vocal, and reasonable about this certain EA design major omission

Veinblood1965

The name Endless just turned me off. Mainly due to how many "unneeded grinds" are in this game like mount training etc. Haven't stepped foot in there and am not about to. Plus also due to the fact just like the OP pointed out, you cannot quit unless you want to start over. Endlessssssssssssssssssssssssss Archive, just say no!

Roxy

jaws343 wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

returning to Mike Finnigan in the SkinnyCheeks interview (timestamp 28:35)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ily2xhGU6HA&t=1715s

SkinnyCheeks has asked if game-makers can not provide with saving progress, or just don't want to?

Mike answered:
At the moment we don't want. there is so much tied into that progression in doing everything
There is a build up of Visions, there is build up of Versus
There is also exploitation behaviors, that you can get into if you have two people in there
and they are saving progress and they branch out and they get two more people and everybody jump
it becomes this never ending wormhole of trying to solve potential bugs

Thank you, both Mike and SkinnyCheeks. That is a great improvement of players-developers communications!


Well.. the absence of saving progress and the inability to skip early levels are two big (in my opinion) design flaws.
And, considering saving/restoring are just two tiny moments i still don't understand how this can be exploited.

Save:
at the very beginning of cycle 1 stage 1 in a given Arc both players exit into the hall and stand on two specially designed pressure plates designated with color or sign. Thus they save the group progress. Saved are remaining threads, visions and versus for each of two. (save before Arc 1 is unnecessary as this is provided by resetting the instance)
Restore:
when the same characters enter the Endless archive, they climb on the "restore" plates marked with the color or sign (situated far from the "save" pressure plates) and game restores the saved state
Other considerations:
saves expire in 30 days (or a week or leaderboard reset)
interval between restores can be set on 15 .. 60 minutes cooldown
same (interval) should be actual for saving, though later save with the same team should overwrite the previous one

(yes, this will require expanding the databases, making a separate on for EA saves, but its volume should not be serious,
just assign each save a unique ID and add and link players characters to the saves they made).

It is even possible for player to have multiple saves (solo and with different partners), though theirs number can be limited to prevent the database uncotrolled growth.
Deleting team saves: not possible. be picky whom you save your raid with. there is the expiration, remember?

what exploits are possible?
to prevent saving right before Tho'at stage (for farming class-specific gear) saves are to be made before stage 1 cycle 1
renaming characters does not affect saves, as CharacterID is recorded, not characters' name
deleting character involved is saves will make save restoration impossible, so this saved states will eventually expire

as for changing players in a team - this is not a "saves" issue, right the opposite: you can not restore the save unless both "original" (e.g. involved in save) are standing on the plates
players change the team composition before save (for carries and such) - game records the group membership at the moment the first damage done at stage 1 cycle 1 - and will not save if players characters changed during the Arc progress.

The scenario two capable players reach 4-4-2 (maybe other stages) and then one of them is replaced by the carry - for the Achievement (or both are replaced by the "tourists". i guess that is what Mike meant) can be done without saving progress, though the saves will shorten the process. how "dangerous" is that for the game health? in my opinion this hardly affects the grand scheme of things seriously. Carries are reality, not only in ESO but in other MMOs.
Generally speaking - is this the real reason not to implement EA saves?


what had i missed?


also game should allow skipping Arcs (like after both players done them 20 or 25 times) as capable players would like to jump into the difficulty they are happy with, not spending time on the content which they consider too easy. In this case game might offer them to start without visions, or offer a random set of visions.
(though saving game with a proper partner resolves most of that. Skips might be optative when two endgame pros enter the dungeon for the first time (for theirs newly composed team), or one of both have exausted theirs saves limits)

It would be really awesome if @ZOS_Finn addresses players considerations and communicated the possible improvements of Endless Archive, as there are things that definitely can be improved.

edit: quotation from Youtube interview may be imprecise. English is not my mother-tongue, sorry for that

Well, you missed the part where those two players can leave the archive, go farm specific sets for specific arcs, or craft specific sets that fully take advantage of the specific buffs they received during the run. You'll notice, there are zero crafting stations in the archive. The intent is, you have your bank space and your character inventory to prepare as much as possible for a run. If you don't have a specific set, or don't have skill morph scrolls, then you cannot optimize and the run is more random. Which is the point.

Not having a save prevents people from completely changing their builds, morphs and all, at random points in the archive. You can only adjust what you went in prepared to adjust.

A good example of this. One of the builds I was running through had the wrong morph of weakness to elements. So, I had to use another skill to take advantage of focused efforts during that run. My poor planning, meant that the attempt was sub-optimal.

I can’t say I understand the notion that adapting your build to complete a particular fight is somehow ‘cheating’. Is the content supposed to be unbeatable? Because to my knowledge the whole point of the content within the game is finding the strategy that works. When a boss comes up that needs a different approach, adapting for it is not somehow an exploit…? And if you fail the first time you shouldn’t have to go back 3-4 hours in progress to try again.
Personally I can’t say I have run into a situation of needing to change a set or anything whilst in the archive, its pretty straight forward just time consuming, however if I did need to, I would just say to my friend ‘hey, can you just stay in here a sec whilst I hop out and grab something? Kay thanks’

jaws343

Roxy wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

returning to Mike Finnigan in the SkinnyCheeks interview (timestamp 28:35)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ily2xhGU6HA&t=1715s

SkinnyCheeks has asked if game-makers can not provide with saving progress, or just don't want to?

Mike answered:
At the moment we don't want. there is so much tied into that progression in doing everything
There is a build up of Visions, there is build up of Versus
There is also exploitation behaviors, that you can get into if you have two people in there
and they are saving progress and they branch out and they get two more people and everybody jump
it becomes this never ending wormhole of trying to solve potential bugs

Thank you, both Mike and SkinnyCheeks. That is a great improvement of players-developers communications!


Well.. the absence of saving progress and the inability to skip early levels are two big (in my opinion) design flaws.
And, considering saving/restoring are just two tiny moments i still don't understand how this can be exploited.

Save:
at the very beginning of cycle 1 stage 1 in a given Arc both players exit into the hall and stand on two specially designed pressure plates designated with color or sign. Thus they save the group progress. Saved are remaining threads, visions and versus for each of two. (save before Arc 1 is unnecessary as this is provided by resetting the instance)
Restore:
when the same characters enter the Endless archive, they climb on the "restore" plates marked with the color or sign (situated far from the "save" pressure plates) and game restores the saved state
Other considerations:
saves expire in 30 days (or a week or leaderboard reset)
interval between restores can be set on 15 .. 60 minutes cooldown
same (interval) should be actual for saving, though later save with the same team should overwrite the previous one

(yes, this will require expanding the databases, making a separate on for EA saves, but its volume should not be serious,
just assign each save a unique ID and add and link players characters to the saves they made).

It is even possible for player to have multiple saves (solo and with different partners), though theirs number can be limited to prevent the database uncotrolled growth.
Deleting team saves: not possible. be picky whom you save your raid with. there is the expiration, remember?

what exploits are possible?
to prevent saving right before Tho'at stage (for farming class-specific gear) saves are to be made before stage 1 cycle 1
renaming characters does not affect saves, as CharacterID is recorded, not characters' name
deleting character involved is saves will make save restoration impossible, so this saved states will eventually expire

as for changing players in a team - this is not a "saves" issue, right the opposite: you can not restore the save unless both "original" (e.g. involved in save) are standing on the plates
players change the team composition before save (for carries and such) - game records the group membership at the moment the first damage done at stage 1 cycle 1 - and will not save if players characters changed during the Arc progress.

The scenario two capable players reach 4-4-2 (maybe other stages) and then one of them is replaced by the carry - for the Achievement (or both are replaced by the "tourists". i guess that is what Mike meant) can be done without saving progress, though the saves will shorten the process. how "dangerous" is that for the game health? in my opinion this hardly affects the grand scheme of things seriously. Carries are reality, not only in ESO but in other MMOs.
Generally speaking - is this the real reason not to implement EA saves?


what had i missed?


also game should allow skipping Arcs (like after both players done them 20 or 25 times) as capable players would like to jump into the difficulty they are happy with, not spending time on the content which they consider too easy. In this case game might offer them to start without visions, or offer a random set of visions.
(though saving game with a proper partner resolves most of that. Skips might be optative when two endgame pros enter the dungeon for the first time (for theirs newly composed team), or one of both have exausted theirs saves limits)

It would be really awesome if @ZOS_Finn addresses players considerations and communicated the possible improvements of Endless Archive, as there are things that definitely can be improved.

edit: quotation from Youtube interview may be imprecise. English is not my mother-tongue, sorry for that

Well, you missed the part where those two players can leave the archive, go farm specific sets for specific arcs, or craft specific sets that fully take advantage of the specific buffs they received during the run. You'll notice, there are zero crafting stations in the archive. The intent is, you have your bank space and your character inventory to prepare as much as possible for a run. If you don't have a specific set, or don't have skill morph scrolls, then you cannot optimize and the run is more random. Which is the point.

Not having a save prevents people from completely changing their builds, morphs and all, at random points in the archive. You can only adjust what you went in prepared to adjust.

A good example of this. One of the builds I was running through had the wrong morph of weakness to elements. So, I had to use another skill to take advantage of focused efforts during that run. My poor planning, meant that the attempt was sub-optimal.

I can’t say I understand the notion that adapting your build to complete a particular fight is somehow ‘cheating’. Is the content supposed to be unbeatable? Because to my knowledge the whole point of the content within the game is finding the strategy that works. When a boss comes up that needs a different approach, adapting for it is not somehow an exploit…? And if you fail the first time you shouldn’t have to go back 3-4 hours in progress to try again.
Personally I can’t say I have run into a situation of needing to change a set or anything whilst in the archive, its pretty straight forward just time consuming, however if I did need to, I would just say to my friend ‘hey, can you just stay in here a sec whilst I hop out and grab something? Kay thanks’

Please point to where I say adapting the build is cheating.

It isn't, and that isn't what I am saying. I am saying that you need to enter prepared for those adaptations ahead of time. Adjusting with your bank and inventory and not your guilds crafting table or a 5 hour dungeon farm run where you collect a set you did not have prior to your archive run so that you can continue your run with better/different gear than what you have available when you started. Or, farming skill points that you did not have access to when you started the run, to better your build for later in the run.

The point of the content, as made clear by not allowing the armory and not allowing you to leave for extended periods of time, is to enter the archive with everything you may need to compete in it. Not enter the archive and then leisurely farm/craft the things that you didn't have that may now be useful to you during the run.

Jaraal

DinoZavr wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

This is such an obvious requirement I am sure it will be added soon.

only if the majority of players is persistent, vocal, and reasonable about this certain EA design major omission

Or they can just look at the statistics. My own empirical evidence shows that the number of EA users is steadily declining, based upon observing the number of completion notifications I'm receiving every day. Surely they can deduce, from a combination of player behavior and player feedback, what they need to do to get more people involved with EA, and to keep those users engaged and returning to the content.

Roxy

jaws343 wrote: »

Roxy wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

returning to Mike Finnigan in the SkinnyCheeks interview (timestamp 28:35)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ily2xhGU6HA&t=1715s

SkinnyCheeks has asked if game-makers can not provide with saving progress, or just don't want to?

Mike answered:
At the moment we don't want. there is so much tied into that progression in doing everything
There is a build up of Visions, there is build up of Versus
There is also exploitation behaviors, that you can get into if you have two people in there
and they are saving progress and they branch out and they get two more people and everybody jump
it becomes this never ending wormhole of trying to solve potential bugs

Thank you, both Mike and SkinnyCheeks. That is a great improvement of players-developers communications!


Well.. the absence of saving progress and the inability to skip early levels are two big (in my opinion) design flaws.
And, considering saving/restoring are just two tiny moments i still don't understand how this can be exploited.

Save:
at the very beginning of cycle 1 stage 1 in a given Arc both players exit into the hall and stand on two specially designed pressure plates designated with color or sign. Thus they save the group progress. Saved are remaining threads, visions and versus for each of two. (save before Arc 1 is unnecessary as this is provided by resetting the instance)
Restore:
when the same characters enter the Endless archive, they climb on the "restore" plates marked with the color or sign (situated far from the "save" pressure plates) and game restores the saved state
Other considerations:
saves expire in 30 days (or a week or leaderboard reset)
interval between restores can be set on 15 .. 60 minutes cooldown
same (interval) should be actual for saving, though later save with the same team should overwrite the previous one

(yes, this will require expanding the databases, making a separate on for EA saves, but its volume should not be serious,
just assign each save a unique ID and add and link players characters to the saves they made).

It is even possible for player to have multiple saves (solo and with different partners), though theirs number can be limited to prevent the database uncotrolled growth.
Deleting team saves: not possible. be picky whom you save your raid with. there is the expiration, remember?

what exploits are possible?
to prevent saving right before Tho'at stage (for farming class-specific gear) saves are to be made before stage 1 cycle 1
renaming characters does not affect saves, as CharacterID is recorded, not characters' name
deleting character involved is saves will make save restoration impossible, so this saved states will eventually expire

as for changing players in a team - this is not a "saves" issue, right the opposite: you can not restore the save unless both "original" (e.g. involved in save) are standing on the plates
players change the team composition before save (for carries and such) - game records the group membership at the moment the first damage done at stage 1 cycle 1 - and will not save if players characters changed during the Arc progress.

The scenario two capable players reach 4-4-2 (maybe other stages) and then one of them is replaced by the carry - for the Achievement (or both are replaced by the "tourists". i guess that is what Mike meant) can be done without saving progress, though the saves will shorten the process. how "dangerous" is that for the game health? in my opinion this hardly affects the grand scheme of things seriously. Carries are reality, not only in ESO but in other MMOs.
Generally speaking - is this the real reason not to implement EA saves?


what had i missed?


also game should allow skipping Arcs (like after both players done them 20 or 25 times) as capable players would like to jump into the difficulty they are happy with, not spending time on the content which they consider too easy. In this case game might offer them to start without visions, or offer a random set of visions.
(though saving game with a proper partner resolves most of that. Skips might be optative when two endgame pros enter the dungeon for the first time (for theirs newly composed team), or one of both have exausted theirs saves limits)

It would be really awesome if @ZOS_Finn addresses players considerations and communicated the possible improvements of Endless Archive, as there are things that definitely can be improved.

edit: quotation from Youtube interview may be imprecise. English is not my mother-tongue, sorry for that

Well, you missed the part where those two players can leave the archive, go farm specific sets for specific arcs, or craft specific sets that fully take advantage of the specific buffs they received during the run. You'll notice, there are zero crafting stations in the archive. The intent is, you have your bank space and your character inventory to prepare as much as possible for a run. If you don't have a specific set, or don't have skill morph scrolls, then you cannot optimize and the run is more random. Which is the point.

Not having a save prevents people from completely changing their builds, morphs and all, at random points in the archive. You can only adjust what you went in prepared to adjust.

A good example of this. One of the builds I was running through had the wrong morph of weakness to elements. So, I had to use another skill to take advantage of focused efforts during that run. My poor planning, meant that the attempt was sub-optimal.

I can’t say I understand the notion that adapting your build to complete a particular fight is somehow ‘cheating’. Is the content supposed to be unbeatable? Because to my knowledge the whole point of the content within the game is finding the strategy that works. When a boss comes up that needs a different approach, adapting for it is not somehow an exploit…? And if you fail the first time you shouldn’t have to go back 3-4 hours in progress to try again.
Personally I can’t say I have run into a situation of needing to change a set or anything whilst in the archive, its pretty straight forward just time consuming, however if I did need to, I would just say to my friend ‘hey, can you just stay in here a sec whilst I hop out and grab something? Kay thanks’

Please point to where I say adapting the build is cheating.

It isn't, and that isn't what I am saying. I am saying that you need to enter prepared for those adaptations ahead of time. Adjusting with your bank and inventory and not your guilds crafting table or a 5 hour dungeon farm run where you collect a set you did not have prior to your archive run so that you can continue your run with better/different gear than what you have available when you started. Or, farming skill points that you did not have access to when you started the run, to better your build for later in the run.

The point of the content, as made clear by not allowing the armory and not allowing you to leave for extended periods of time, is to enter the archive with everything you may need to compete in it. Not enter the archive and then leisurely farm/craft the things that you didn't have that may now be useful to you during the run.

jaws343 wrote: »

Roxy wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

DinoZavr wrote: »

returning to Mike Finnigan in the SkinnyCheeks interview (timestamp 28:35)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ily2xhGU6HA&t=1715s

SkinnyCheeks has asked if game-makers can not provide with saving progress, or just don't want to?

Mike answered:
At the moment we don't want. there is so much tied into that progression in doing everything
There is a build up of Visions, there is build up of Versus
There is also exploitation behaviors, that you can get into if you have two people in there
and they are saving progress and they branch out and they get two more people and everybody jump
it becomes this never ending wormhole of trying to solve potential bugs

Thank you, both Mike and SkinnyCheeks. That is a great improvement of players-developers communications!


Well.. the absence of saving progress and the inability to skip early levels are two big (in my opinion) design flaws.
And, considering saving/restoring are just two tiny moments i still don't understand how this can be exploited.

Save:
at the very beginning of cycle 1 stage 1 in a given Arc both players exit into the hall and stand on two specially designed pressure plates designated with color or sign. Thus they save the group progress. Saved are remaining threads, visions and versus for each of two. (save before Arc 1 is unnecessary as this is provided by resetting the instance)
Restore:
when the same characters enter the Endless archive, they climb on the "restore" plates marked with the color or sign (situated far from the "save" pressure plates) and game restores the saved state
Other considerations:
saves expire in 30 days (or a week or leaderboard reset)
interval between restores can be set on 15 .. 60 minutes cooldown
same (interval) should be actual for saving, though later save with the same team should overwrite the previous one

(yes, this will require expanding the databases, making a separate on for EA saves, but its volume should not be serious,
just assign each save a unique ID and add and link players characters to the saves they made).

It is even possible for player to have multiple saves (solo and with different partners), though theirs number can be limited to prevent the database uncotrolled growth.
Deleting team saves: not possible. be picky whom you save your raid with. there is the expiration, remember?

what exploits are possible?
to prevent saving right before Tho'at stage (for farming class-specific gear) saves are to be made before stage 1 cycle 1
renaming characters does not affect saves, as CharacterID is recorded, not characters' name
deleting character involved is saves will make save restoration impossible, so this saved states will eventually expire

as for changing players in a team - this is not a "saves" issue, right the opposite: you can not restore the save unless both "original" (e.g. involved in save) are standing on the plates
players change the team composition before save (for carries and such) - game records the group membership at the moment the first damage done at stage 1 cycle 1 - and will not save if players characters changed during the Arc progress.

The scenario two capable players reach 4-4-2 (maybe other stages) and then one of them is replaced by the carry - for the Achievement (or both are replaced by the "tourists". i guess that is what Mike meant) can be done without saving progress, though the saves will shorten the process. how "dangerous" is that for the game health? in my opinion this hardly affects the grand scheme of things seriously. Carries are reality, not only in ESO but in other MMOs.
Generally speaking - is this the real reason not to implement EA saves?


what had i missed?


also game should allow skipping Arcs (like after both players done them 20 or 25 times) as capable players would like to jump into the difficulty they are happy with, not spending time on the content which they consider too easy. In this case game might offer them to start without visions, or offer a random set of visions.
(though saving game with a proper partner resolves most of that. Skips might be optative when two endgame pros enter the dungeon for the first time (for theirs newly composed team), or one of both have exausted theirs saves limits)

It would be really awesome if @ZOS_Finn addresses players considerations and communicated the possible improvements of Endless Archive, as there are things that definitely can be improved.

edit: quotation from Youtube interview may be imprecise. English is not my mother-tongue, sorry for that

Well, you missed the part where those two players can leave the archive, go farm specific sets for specific arcs, or craft specific sets that fully take advantage of the specific buffs they received during the run. You'll notice, there are zero crafting stations in the archive. The intent is, you have your bank space and your character inventory to prepare as much as possible for a run. If you don't have a specific set, or don't have skill morph scrolls, then you cannot optimize and the run is more random. Which is the point.

Not having a save prevents people from completely changing their builds, morphs and all, at random points in the archive. You can only adjust what you went in prepared to adjust.

A good example of this. One of the builds I was running through had the wrong morph of weakness to elements. So, I had to use another skill to take advantage of focused efforts during that run. My poor planning, meant that the attempt was sub-optimal.

I can’t say I understand the notion that adapting your build to complete a particular fight is somehow ‘cheating’. Is the content supposed to be unbeatable? Because to my knowledge the whole point of the content within the game is finding the strategy that works. When a boss comes up that needs a different approach, adapting for it is not somehow an exploit…? And if you fail the first time you shouldn’t have to go back 3-4 hours in progress to try again.
Personally I can’t say I have run into a situation of needing to change a set or anything whilst in the archive, its pretty straight forward just time consuming, however if I did need to, I would just say to my friend ‘hey, can you just stay in here a sec whilst I hop out and grab something? Kay thanks’

Please point to where I say adapting the build is cheating.

It isn't, and that isn't what I am saying. I am saying that you need to enter prepared for those adaptations ahead of time. Adjusting with your bank and inventory and not your guilds crafting table or a 5 hour dungeon farm run where you collect a set you did not have prior to your archive run so that you can continue your run with better/different gear than what you have available when you started. Or, farming skill points that you did not have access to when you started the run, to better your build for later in the run.

The point of the content, as made clear by not allowing the armory and not allowing you to leave for extended periods of time, is to enter the archive with everything you may need to compete in it. Not enter the archive and then leisurely farm/craft the things that you didn't have that may now be useful to you during the run.

You are creating your own asinine version of how it should be based on your own preference. If you go in there and realise something else would be more useful for you, then it is purely asinine to say ‘if you have it in your bank then it’s allowed, but you can’t take a minute to hop to a guild trader and buy it, you can’t take ten minutes to go and earn it. Oh and if you need a skill then that’s cool if you have a stack of points ur sitting on then use them but god forbid you spend a minute to go and grab one. You’re making your own idea sound weak and flawed. Plus, how many people do you think are actually going in there and being like ‘oh if only my build was entirely different and I could rebuild it on the spot right now’

SpacemanSpiff1

if you do more faster, youll get through more

pklemming

It takes us 5-6 hours to get to the point it starts to get remotely interesting, and by that time I am just exhausted. I mainly stop due to tiredness, not 0 threads.

HalfDragoness

Roxy wrote: »

LouisaB75 wrote: »

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

LouisaB75 wrote: »

But even without the save function someone found a way to exploit something to do a plus 50 hours run, I believe.

Not that that seems to be a priority to sort... unlike the leaderboard.

I’m just guessing here because I don’t know if it actually works… but I wonder if they found a way to keep the game from logging them out. (Is there downtime in EA where you can go AFK and not risk dying?)
In my opinion, it was probably something the most of us have access to and already installed on our computers.

I heard it was something to do with the avatars but no idea what and haven't looked into it.

And I did wonder why the bosses in Fargrave were so crowded compared to Blackwood, with lots of random firing off of attacks when the boss was not up.

Yeah, people have been getting glitched and staying in the avatar form even after the verse ends. My friend accidentally got stuck in the werewolf behemoth form, but seeing as how it doesn’t have a heal, it actually ended up ending our run as it persisted after death too. We tried everything to reset his character without resetting the run too. He left the group, I had another friend join me to do a round whilst he left the area entirely, he then went back and reset his archive, and when he joined back into the group, the moment he hopped back in to the archive the form came back.

I had a less game ending but much funnier version of this. I got stuck in goat form. I still had access to all my skills but visually I was a goat. The person I was running with got a picture of me facing off against a dragon.

@LouisaB75

baratron

All I want is a save that lets me park my character in the Archive, log off, and go eat/use the bathroom/sleep without risk of losing my progress.

It's true that it's possible to take a break regularly while playing, when you're at the point of picking up the Vision. You can simply not go through the portal to the next arena. But it's not possible to get a proper eye/brain/hand stretch break because you don't know how long it'll be before you idle out.

It would be great if there was some way to take a FORMAL 15 minute break where you don't get idled out but know that your progress is being saved.

It would get around the whole problem of "going to pick up gear that you didn't already have" because the entire game would just be locked in the pause state. You wouldn't be able to switch character without logging off and losing the progress. But nor would you need to worry about what happens if your internet blips out while you're afk dealing with important human biological functions.

I just don't want people having seizures because they haven't slept, or collapsing with low blood sugar because they didn't take time to eat, or any other health problem due to the lack of a proper safe break system.

Roxy

HalfDragoness wrote: »

Roxy wrote: »

LouisaB75 wrote: »

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

LouisaB75 wrote: »

But even without the save function someone found a way to exploit something to do a plus 50 hours run, I believe.

Not that that seems to be a priority to sort... unlike the leaderboard.

I’m just guessing here because I don’t know if it actually works… but I wonder if they found a way to keep the game from logging them out. (Is there downtime in EA where you can go AFK and not risk dying?)
In my opinion, it was probably something the most of us have access to and already installed on our computers.

I heard it was something to do with the avatars but no idea what and haven't looked into it.

And I did wonder why the bosses in Fargrave were so crowded compared to Blackwood, with lots of random firing off of attacks when the boss was not up.

Yeah, people have been getting glitched and staying in the avatar form even after the verse ends. My friend accidentally got stuck in the werewolf behemoth form, but seeing as how it doesn’t have a heal, it actually ended up ending our run as it persisted after death too. We tried everything to reset his character without resetting the run too. He left the group, I had another friend join me to do a round whilst he left the area entirely, he then went back and reset his archive, and when he joined back into the group, the moment he hopped back in to the archive the form came back.

I had a less game ending but much funnier version of this. I got stuck in goat form. I still had access to all my skills but visually I was a goat. The person I was running with got a picture of me facing off against a dragon.

@LouisaB75

You win this one lol, that is incredible 😂

opethmaniac

I tried EA and expected safepoints to be implemented. This is or should be a self-evident mechanic in games with staggered arena battles. Admittedly, I don't know many games like this, but in Grim Dawn, for example, you can save all 10 waves.
As it is now, (younger) players with a lot of time have a big advantage, but working people like me have maybe 2 hours to play in the evening, and EA in its current form is not an option for me.

Braggar

HalfDragoness

LMAO! A goat no way, that is a great shot. You can post your image, in the bug pit here if you like?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/634254/the-bug-pit/p3

I collect all sorts of bug images. Cracks me up.

LouisaB75

Braggar wrote: »

HalfDragoness

LMAO! A goat no way, that is a great shot. You can post your image, in the bug pit here if you like?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/634254/the-bug-pit/p3

I collect all sorts of bug images. Cracks me up.

I was, as you can probably tell, lazing around dead. Figured since I couldn't do anything else I would take pictures. As you can see HalfGOATess was beating that dragon soundly.

It was a very buggy run we had. I went to the goat side portal but she went to Tho'at. I beat the butcher but got no loot, extra verse or portal to get out. When I finally did after relogging I found a goat waiting at Tho'at.

Necrotech_Master

i dont really feel it needs a save

i do think that they could implement some way to do arc skips, so you could start at a higher arc, but if you didnt have the visions built up, those late arcs would be a horrendous slog unless you wanted to challenge yourself

if i just want to speed through arc 1 for the daily, i get on a pure dps toon and i can finish arc 1 within 15-20 min

as a pure dps i can make it to arc 4 by like 90 minutes, but thats when it becomes too difficult to progress solo

using a tank character tends to slow down the earlier arcs but makes later arcs easier

currently, if ive gotten a decent vision setup in a 2 person group can get up to arc 8 in about 4 hours (the later arcs slow down a lot due to the high enemy health)

i dont really see any reason to go past arc 4 unless you wanted to push yourself or farm currency due to the way archive fortunes increase per arc

like literally there is no reason to really go past arc 4, which on avg takes about 90-120 minutes to clear (again depending on visions and verses you get)

Braggar

LouisaB75 wrote: »

Braggar wrote: »

HalfDragoness

LMAO! A goat no way, that is a great shot. You can post your image, in the bug pit here if you like?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/634254/the-bug-pit/p3

I collect all sorts of bug images. Cracks me up.

I was, as you can probably tell, lazing around dead. Figured since I couldn't do anything else I would take pictures. As you can see HalfGOATess was beating that dragon soundly.

It was a very buggy run we had. I went to the goat side portal but she went to Tho'at. I beat the butcher but got no loot, extra verse or portal to get out. When I finally did after relogging I found a goat waiting at Tho'at.

Forget all the fancy strong armor sets, jewelries and skills. Goats kick ass. One hit is fatal. Oh tell me about it. I hope EA won´t glitch so heavy, from now on? Thank you for the image. Love it.

KiltMaster

That's a fair point. I saw some streamer who was in there for like 5+ hours and could've kept going, but they had to log off for the night.