The Real Reason PvP and End Game PvE are so Niche

Stamicka

I've seen a few posts recently about why PvP is niche as well as posts about why trials are unwelcoming to new players. I think both of these things are related and I wanted to make a post about my thoughts on the situation.The thing that PvP and end game PvE have in common is that they are both combat oriented competitive activities. I also see a big divide within ESO's playerbase between casual and competitive players. While such a divide is hard for a game developer to deal with, I think ZOS' current approach is the worst of both worlds and in the end, players near both ends of the spectrum are unhappy with the game.

The words casual and competitive don't come close to describing the broad range of players that play ESO, so I'll do my best to make some distinctions. I acknowledge that there are players who aren't competitive at all and no matter what, PvP and end game PvE will not appeal to them. However, there are also casual players who are willing to try PvP and end game PvE and are discouraged or are otherwise unable to get into them for various reasons. At the other end of the spectrum, there are players who treat ESO as a competitive game and those that come from other competitive games and realize ESO isn't cut out for competitive gameplay. ZOS' current approach simultaneously keeps casual players from entering more competitive play, discourages current competitive players from continuing to play, and keeps existing competitive players from playing ESO to begin with. Let's look at how.

I think that there are 4 main things that competitive players look for in a game and all successful competitive games have these things. These are:

1. Community
Community has many aspects, but it mainly involves having other people near the same skill level to play with and against. In other words, are there enough players playing and engaging with the game? Is there a healthy stream of new players? Is there discussion and ways for players to get involved outside of the game (this would include Twitch and Youtube communities).

2. Skill Expression
Skill expression is about whether or not the players actions and time spent on the game change the outcome of the game. Does playing the game more allow a player to improve? Can players feel or see their skills improve? Is whether or not a player succeeds a matter of skill?

3. Low Barriers to Entry
Low barriers to entry is about whether or not new or returning players can get back into the game or an activity within the game with relative ease. Is there a lot of knowledge needed before a player is able to play effectively? Are there many hurdles or grinds that a player must overcome before they can get their foot in the door?

4. Reward
Reward is about what the player gets for playing and doing well at the game. Reward can be in the form of in game exclusive items, but it can also be in the form of recognition. This aspect is tied to skill expression as well because players should feel rewarded for building their skills, whether its beating a score or another player.

By looking at competitive games in this way, we see that ESO's competitive activities are not very competitive at all. In every single listed aspect, ESO fails.

Community in ESO
The end game community in ESO has drastically dwindled and this is evident wherever you look. There's less PvP and PvE activity for ESO on Twitch and Youtube. PvP campaigns hold less people than they ever have and on many servers, they do not fill up for most of the day if they fill at all. Competitive players who group queue in Battlegrounds will have to wait for long periods of time just to find a match (evidence for bad skill distribution among players in PvP). There's less activity on PvE trial leaderboards and only one or two teams completely dominates every single trial in most cases. For those apart of large ESO discord servers, those are much quieter now as well.

Out of the 4 aspects listed, Community is one of the most dangerous ones to lack. When community declines, competitive players lose friends and people to compete against. This causes a cyclical mass exodus of players. Eventually, a mass exodus of players makes it harder for new players to get their foot in the door. There will be fewer experienced players to teach the new ones and cliques will form in the more experienced players that are left which can create a very exclusive and unwelcoming environment for new players.

Skill Expression in ESO
Skill plays a minor role in ESO and ZOS has explicitly stated that it wants to close the skill gap. There have been constant changes to the core mechanics that many players have become familiar with. Light attack weaving, animation canceling, how blocking and barswapping function, projectile travel times, and many more aspects of the game have been changed in an attempt to shrink the skill gap. Additionally, the addition of unbalanced sets and mythics decreases the role of skill by making builds more important. In ESO, it is not always true that the more skilled player wins nor is it even true that a player can always see their skills improve. In many cases, players don't know whether their build or their skill is the issue.

ESO's skill expression issue also affects all of the types of players I listed above. Newer and more casual players will have a hard time identifying areas of improvement or even seeing their improvement since the build they are in plays a bigger role than the skill that they have. Existing competitive players don't like feeling like their time spent building skills was a waste. This is especially true if they learned to master something like bash or light attack weaving only to see it nerfed. Other players from competitive games won't even be interested in trying ESO because they will see that it is not an environment that rewards skill and time spent.

Barriers to Entry in ESO
The ideal competitive game would have low barriers to entry. The barriers to entry in ESO are very high. There are a lot of moving parts to ESO's barrier to entry issue. One barrier to entry is of course is level/CP. I think level differences are to be expected in MMORPGs and ESO at least provides a No CP option for PvP. Low level in PvE is also an issue for the highest end of PvE content, but there is still veteran content that can be completed by lower CP players. The level barrier is more minor compared to ESO's other big barriers. Perhaps ESO's biggest barrier to entry is the knowledge required to even get your foot in the door in PvP and in PvE trials. This is mainly in the form of knowing how to build a character. There are 100s of sets in ESO. Many of the sets are completely useless and they even gimp and trap inexperienced players without them even knowing. Some choice is a good thing, too much choice is a bad thing. A lot of knowledge is needed to make an effective build on your own and sort through the useless sets. The game also does not do a good job of teaching the important core mechanics such as blocking, breaking free, light weaving, and rolling at the right time. One big reason for this is that the difficulty difference between Normal vs Veteran and Veteran vs Veteran HM is far too vast. In normal and overland content players will not understand the importance of block, roll, and break free because there is no reason to do so. While information about these mechanics can be found within the game, I still don't think the information is easy to come across nor is the importance emphasized. Lastly, once a player figures out how to build a character, there are often many things that must be completed to obtain the sets. I think ZOS has done a good job with making sets easier to obtain for PvE, but many good PvP sets require a PvE grind. There's also the problem of mythics which sometimes requires tedious and time consuming lead grinding.

All and all, once again, all types of potential players are negatively affected by ESO's high barrier to entry. The grind may discourage potential first time players as well as returning players from even trying PvP or PvE to see if they like it. This keeps the communities small.

Reward in ESO
This post is already becoming quite long so I will keep this part short. Reward in ESO has been discussed many times on this forum. The game simply isn't very rewarding and rewards definitely don't seem to scale with the difficulty of an achievement. In PvP, AP isn't all that useful, many of the sets from rewards of the worthy aren't all that useful, and other reward types have lost their value (such as Alliance Rank) due to ZOS' actions. In PvE, leaderboards are often broken, there's not much built in recognition for high achieving players within the game, and the in game rewards for difficult achievements can also be lackluster.

If the rewards aren't good, fewer people will be interested in even getting their foot in the door (there's no reason to). Competitive players won't feel like difficult achievements are worth achieving. In many cases, the exclusivity of a difficult achievement is a reward, but this loses value with power creeps and content nerfs. In the end, bad reward structure leads to less participation and activity from all types of players.

ZOS' Approach
ESO is lacking in all 4 of the outlined areas, and each area impacts most types of existing players and all types of potential players. I think ESO realizes some of these issues within the game and they have made efforts to address it. Unfortunately, I think the developers attempts to fix these issues end up worsening each outlined aspect in every way, further making every type of player unhappy. There are many examples of ZOS using the approach I am about to discuss, but I want to focus on 2 of the most notorious examples: procs and Oakensoul.

Procs
Proc sets have been an issue in ESO for many years now. Since PvP is an environment where lining up burst is essential to being successful, I think the introduction of proc sets was a way to shrink the gap between experienced players and newer players. Using sets, items, or nerfing mechanics is a consistent theme in ZOS' approach to fix ESO's issues, but every time this sort of approach only ends up upsetting every type of player. While it is true that proc sets can allow less experienced players to kill more experienced players, the end result is that every player will still be unhappy. At the start of the first procalypse, the sets were hard to obtain (barrier to entry issue). Viper was the most effective proc and it could only be obtained through trials or by paying millions of gold. Eventually proc sets could be obtained through dungeons or arenas, but this can still be a barrier for new players. Proc sets also negatively impact both skill expression and reward since using these sets can overshadow skill differences and getting kills may feel less rewarding. Lastly, community is negatively impacted since many players become frustrated with proc metas and quit the game. If we look at procs by types of players, newer players may be unable to even obtain these sets. Newer players that can obtain these sets may have trouble identifying areas where they need to improve since proc sets do some of the work for the player. Additionally, competitive players using proc sets can more effectively use them, creating a very poor experience for the newer players. Competitive players who don't use proc sets will be at a disadvantage against those that do and may either quit or adapt to the meta. In the end everyone is wearing proc sets, new players either can't obtain these sets or die more easily than ever. Competitive players get upset with the lack of skill expression or feeling of reward for getting kills. Potential players will see that ESO does not have a healthy PvP environment. the end result is that everybody lost and PvP is worse for it. This is the type of approach that ZOS should absolutely AVOID for addressing these issues.

Oakensoul
Oakensoul is a more recent attempt to fix some of ESO's issues, but in many ways it suffered from a few of the same issues as procs. Oakensoul itself had a barrier to entry issue since it is a mythic that required annoying leads and it was locked behind a chapter's paywall. While it made PvE easier for some, it was eventually nerfed, leaving some of those players alienated and discouraged from PvEing again because the mythic didn't do anything to help those players build needed skills. In PvP, Oakensoul had a similar effect to procs, where it helped some players get kills more easily, but ultimately more experienced players utilized the mythic better. In the end, all types of players were left unhappy. Once again, the approach used was to introduce a skill gap shrinking item to fix issues which never works.

Conclusion/Solution
In order for both PvP and end game PvE to grow and succeed, Community, Skill Expression, Barriers to Entry, and Reward need to be kept in mind. It is time to stop introducing new item sets or nerfing core mechanics since this approach ends up upsetting every type of player as outlined. Instead, Skill Expression should be embraced, barriers to entry need to be lowered, rewards need to be increased, and communities should be free to grow and not alienated. Additionally, the knowledge gap should be addressed by either reducing the number of sets, or adding more opportunities for players to learn core mechanics throughout their time playing. With the current approach of introducing item set bandaids or nerfing players to be on the same level, the number of players engaging in these activities will continue to decline. A more involved and complete approach is needed, otherwise these activities will remain niche or die out.

<edited title for Trolling or Baiting>

React

Great post, you really hit the nail on the head with just about everything here.

colossalvoids

Actually sums up the situation we're in pretty well.

Soarora

Stamicka wrote: »

Community in ESO
Eventually, a mass exodus of players makes it harder for new players to get their foot in the door. There will be fewer experienced players to teach the new ones and cliques will form in the more experienced players that are left which can create a very exclusive and unwelcoming environment for new players.

This is exactly what I’m seeing. Now granted, I’m not known to get around, but all 3 guilds I run with were once training guilds. Now one barely runs and the other two are primarily hardmodes or pug tris that tend to get cliquey. I have heard from a trial lead that people do not want to do learning runs anymore and would rather just run with people they know because they’re tired of roster prog— of people coming and going and of trying to help people improve who simply don’t want to. I think this development goes hand-in-hand with ZOS trying to reduce skill gap as people who don’t strive for the stars now find themselves sitting on a mountain and refusing to budge. If I never had to change, I’d still be a meta-hating “don’t you dare give me advice” person too. Granted, admittedly, I still am a little but I am much more reasonable about it now and will run meta when it’s the right time and place. Instead, we see people who complained of not being able to use their build their way. “Play how you want” simply does not apply to trial endgame, though it can work in dungeons if the build is at least decent in some capacity. Yet, the lack of “play how you want” capabilities in endgame is a problem in itself. There’s a post by Code around here I read once that stuck with me about how new trial HMs are so hard there’s no wiggle room. If people can’t bring the class they’re most comfortable with, that adds a barrier to entry. I certainly won’t be out here tanking on a DK, which automatically puts me out of MTing many groups.

Stamicka wrote: »

Skill Expression in ESO
Skill plays a minor role in ESO and ZOS has explicitly stated that it wants to close the skill gap. There have been constant changes to the core mechanics that many players have become familiar with. Light attack weaving, animation canceling, how blocking and barswapping function, projectile travel times, and many more aspects of the game have been changed in an attempt to shrink the skill gap.

This does directly lead to the point of lack of community. After all, U35 WAS to raise the floor and lower the ceiling, and look where that’s got us— a shocking decrease in community and no noticeable increase in casual player satisfaction. Trying to shrink the skill gap just harms the greater community by fueling us vs them between casuals and endgamers. Also, as you stated, important skills just aren’t told to players by the game in a noticeable way. Instead of reducing the skill gap by spreadsheet balancing, I really think ZOS needs to dedicate resources to updating and improving the skill advisor and creating advanced combat tutorials that once again teach the basics of break free, block, and heavy attack, but also weaving (bash and LA), penetration vs crit, etc.

Also on barriers to entry, I do think the reduction in sweeping meta changes has helped. That said, you really do need multiple DLCs to be effective and that is a problem, though also a good business strategy as it gets us buying DLCs. Do you want to heal sunspire HM? Okay, get Murkmire (brp staff), WGT + ICP (SPC), High Isle (pillagers), Greymoor (antiquities), and all DLCs required for pearls of elnofey. Or, the easier route of SCP + FL (jorvulds), Greymoor (RO), and.. oh wait… Greymoor (antiquities), and all the DLCs for Spaulder. (Though you can use something other than spaulder, that’s still 4 DLCs required to even do the trial— SCP + FL, Greymoor, Elsweyr, and probably DoM + FV for Symphony?)

Stamicka wrote: »

Reward in ESO
This post is already becoming quite long so I will keep this part short. Reward in ESO has been discussed many times on this forum. The game simply isn't very rewarding and rewards definitely don't seem to scale with the difficulty of an achievement.

#BRING BACK CHALLENGER REWARDS and #BRING BACK TRIAL VET COMPLETION SKINS
Without worm wizard and the MoL skin, I possibly wouldn’t have joined endgame in the first place. It feels like a slap in the face that we finally got a new dungeon skin and aaahh… its vet completion. Challengers reward literally nothing, making it better to do old challengers, skip the new challengers, go straight into HMs and then tris. Once again, this makes entry into endgame harder because why would anyone run LoM or DC or BV challenger? Even to help another player, it feels better to help them get a skin or a personality, not literally nothing (they’ll get challenger when they get tri anyways, which at least has the tritle). Not even a title for many challengers…

Overall, great post. I hope this leads to some good discussion.

fizzylu

In terms of PvE, the only thing that keeps me away from it are the community and rewards.

I've been in one guild where I actually did vet dungeons regularly. It was fun, but that's because you weren't told how to build nor asked questions about how much DPS you can do to a target dummy. Lots of times, the most enjoyable dungeon runs in this guild were done without a true healer as well. Sadly when browsing guilds, I see basically no PvE focused ones that have this kind of chill approach to the game; instead swearing by the holy trinity, parsing like lives depend on it, and expecting people to play what's "meta". It's extra sad to say, but I truly find playing with PUGs more fun (although long queue times, especially for vet, can be a bad time). But extra extra sadly.... there's really no point in me doing a dungeon more than the one time to complete the quest when they first release. Which brings me to the second issue.

This game also has the worst loot/reward system I have ever seen. It feels like if you're not farming an armor set then there's no point in doing trials or dungeons. And yeah, achievement rewards like skins and pets are nice.... but something that just makes doing them regularly worthwhile would keep the content way more alive and give them so much more replay value. I personally would like to see some kind of bounty system added to the Undaunted that rewards decent amounts of gold for completing certain dungeons+trials and their bosses.

It's crazy to think that in other games I play, at "endgame" I PvP and and do group PvE content about 50/50. Meanwhile in ESO, the majority of my time goes to neither and instead.... 50% of my time goes to housing, 40% to PvP, and 10% (I'm even being generous here with this number) to group PvE content.

Tandor

Bring back character-based achievements (as an option if it isn't feasible/desirable to drop account-wide achievements altogether) and training guilds will return. Veteran players who had always used alts to lead newer players through dungeons etc warned they wouldn't bother to do so if account-wide achievements were introduced in a way that meant their alts got nothing for completing the runs and so it has turned out.

On rewards, I'm not sure that "decent" amounts of gold are the answer, given that most endgame players probably already have "indecent" amounts of gold just sitting in the bank.

Elyu

Good stuff.

My 2 cents:

Rewards are SO important. However there are 2 major problems in ESO regarding this:
1: The absurd quantity of crown store / crown crate / event cosmetics (including mounts, skins and personalities), one estimate I saw placed the number of in-game rewards at 5% of the total (and that was including event rewards) thereby leaving the actual total of rewards for difficult activities at less than 5% of total cosmetics available in-game.
2: Carry-runs. If there is less than 5% of the total cosmetic rewards available from challenging in-game content, but you can buy access to most of those from other players, that leaves only the solo arena rewards as being the only "meaningful" reward left in game.

Oaksensoul:
Think you hit the nail on the head here. It acts as a skill leveler, bringing less skilled players closer to the level of higher skilled players....but not ALL the way.
And this has two problems:
1: Lower skilled players will have less incentive to improve their skill
2: Higher skilled players will have their effort undermined

Barrier to entry:
From other posts I've made / seen this is a combination of skill availability and poor set balancing.
Only a few meta sets. Only a few meta skill setups.
I REALLY want to be able to bring a themed build into vet content (DLC dungeons, vet trials) but I know anything outside the meta is SIGNIFICANTLY worse.
Seen many posts made about balancing this set, or that class, but I suspect there is fundamental problem with the combat mechanics itself that renders all of these suggestions redundant.
However - one small solution would be an in-game build testing arena (NOT the PTS server, but in the BASE GAME):
Some location that allows players to test build combinations, and try gear sets, attributes, curses, skills, morphs, foods etc and able to swap between them for free, instead of investing time and in-game gold into something only to find it doesn't work.

Lexalious

The pure quality of this post made me smile. Thank you

barney2525

IMHO, if they did not have gear designed specifically and soley for PvP, they would have a lot more participants.

Players play the game and improve their gear as they go. Once they reach 50/160 they end up with a choice. Either keep playing PVE or switch over and play PvP. The gearing is completely different. And, where really high quality PVE gear can be crafted, not so much for PvP. That top gear has to be farmed.

If ALL the gear was equally effective, be it in PVE or PvP, players would more readily switch back and forth, and participate in both aspects, depending on what their mood was that day. If they knew their PVE gear was also top tier PvP, they would be glad to hop over to Cyradil now and then.

Gray_howling_parrot

Tandor wrote: »

Bring back character-based achievements (as an option if it isn't feasible/desirable to drop account-wide achievements altogether) and training guilds will return. Veteran players who had always used alts to lead newer players through dungeons etc warned they wouldn't bother to do so if account-wide achievements were introduced in a way that meant their alts got nothing for completing the runs and so it has turned out.

On rewards, I'm not sure that "decent" amounts of gold are the answer, given that most endgame players probably already have "indecent" amounts of gold just sitting in the bank.

My man will find every instance possible to try to get character achievements back, good lord. The issue with end game has nothing to do with character achievements dude, it’s reward structure, barrier to entry, etc as OP stated.

Most rewards that people want are generally cosmetic in nature - so, you’re right about that for sure.

Gray_howling_parrot

Very well thought out post - I agree 100% with everything you stated.

Biggest question is if ZOS’s “vision” aligns with player sentiment for the future

Tommy_The_Gun

Great post. When it comes to PvP, on top of what OP mentioned I would also add um... "a Ball Group problem" (from the lack of better).

In short, it means that on top of many players with different skill level & gear, there are also different "play styles" coexisting & interacting with each other. Different playstyles have different "power fantasy", combat effectiveness & preferences. Some players prefer to play solo, some like groups and some other like "quasi groups" (lots of solo players playing in "zerg" etc).

One of the most prominent & meta playstyle is of course a full group (aka Ball Group due to its behavior). ZOS also should take into account stuff like this when balancing the game, as in Cyrodiil & IC, something like "match maker" simply does not exist. The only way to balance things out is through battle spirit & skills & sets themselves. And tbh. ZOS is not doing their job well in that department. It was not always the case as some playstyles that were overperforming (like bow ganking) received some heavy nerfs (and rightfully so) in the past. But as far as I am aware, some playstyles that were always overperforming & meta have never received a rightfully deserved reduction in effectiveness.

Just to be clear: a solo player or even a bunch of solo players for the most part should not able to stop an entire full group, but right now, balance wise is totally broken since even 50 decent players utilizing sieges are not able to stop full group.

^ This is also the reason why many players stopped PvP-ing at some point. It simply was no longer fun. When population was ninja reduced yet again, finding fights without ball group (that you clearly have no chance to fight) was no longer possible, so it resulted with many average to decent players abandoning ESO PvP. Next patch with Scribing it is gonna get even worse & I suspect evem more players will quit PvP. It was kinda ZOS fault as they caused this situation to occur in a 1st place (whenever accidentally or intentionally).

jle30303

Somebody talked about U35 "raising the floor and lowering the ceiling"...

The problem was that it DIDN'T DO THAT.

It lowered the ceiling in a lot of places, but failed to actually raise the floor. In fact if anything it lowered it. In fact what needs doing, for the high-end content, is a level of floor-raising *without lowering the ceiling*. Nobody should go from "can complete this content" to "cannot complete this content": the movement should be in the opposite direction.

allmyxlvntx

Elyu wrote: »

Good stuff.

My 2 cents:

Rewards are SO important. However there are 2 major problems in ESO regrading this:
1: The absurd quantity of crown store / crown crate / event cosmetics (including mounts, skins and personalities), one estimate I saw placed the number of in-game rewards at 5% of the total (and that was including event rewards) thereby leaving the actual total of rewards for difficult activities at less than 5% of total cosmetics available in-game.
2: Carry-runs. If there is less than 5% of the total cosmetic rewards available from challenging in-game content, but you can buy access to most of those from other players, that leaves only the solo arena rewards as being the only "meaningful" reward left in game.

Oaksensoul:
Think you hit the nail on the head here. It acts as a skill leveler, bringing less skilled players closer to the level of higher skilled players....but not ALL the way.
And this has two problems:
1: Lower skilled players will have less incentive to improve their skill
2: Higher skilled players will have their effort undermined

Barrier to entry:
From other posts I've made / seen this is a combination of skill availability and poor set balancing.
Only a few meta sets. Only a few meta skill setups.
I REALLY want to be able to bring a themed build into vet content (DLC dungeons, vet trials) but I know anything outside the meta is SIGNIFICANTLY worse.
Seen many posts made about balancing this set, or that class, but I suspect there is fundamental problem with the combat mechanics itself that renders all of these suggestions redundant.
However - one small solution would be an in-game build testing arena (NOT the PTS server, but in the BASE GAME):
Some location that allows players to test build combinations, and try gear sets, attributes, curses, skills, morphs, foods etc and able to swap between them for free, instead of investing time and in-game gold into something only to find it doesn't work.

Hasenpfote

ESO has a gamedesign issue, light attack weaving is mandatory to do a meaningful dps, this can by bypasses if you do heavy attack build.

Sakiri

Adding pets/mounts/skins to base vet completion with no increased chance on hard mode, would go a long way. Example, world of warcraft.

Raids and dungeons have a chance to drop mini pets and mounts, as well as achievement mounts. This encourages replaying the content, even after it's irrelevant level wise. Here in ESO, people would do it on base vet if there's no point to doing it on hard mode, this increasing the number of runs done.

These don't even need to be super unique. No glow, simply/Unarmored versions of crown store mounts, recolor. Keep the ultrafancy to the store if you want, but basic recolored versions I'd be fine with.

Blizzard realized that players like numbers. I personally have over 470 unique mounts in WoW. People don't use them all, the collect them just to have.

It'd work here, too.

allmyxlvntx

Best idea I have seen in a long time: a place to test builds in which players have access to all sets and skills in game without going to PTS. Some sort of test arena or city. Players do their thing, decide which sets to chase after, which mythics… and leave the special place to go get them.

barney2525

Tandor wrote: »

Bring back character-based achievements (as an option if it isn't feasible/desirable to drop account-wide achievements altogether) and training guilds will return. Veteran players who had always used alts to lead newer players through dungeons etc warned they wouldn't bother to do so if account-wide achievements were introduced in a way that meant their alts got nothing for completing the runs and so it has turned out.

On rewards, I'm not sure that "decent" amounts of gold are the answer, given that most endgame players probably already have "indecent" amounts of gold just sitting in the bank.

I know its a tangent, but since this was brought up, ... IMHO Account wide achievements have always made no sense. Obtaining an Account Reward for the first time something is Achieved, like the white dye for level 10 vampire - That's fine. It's the Item Reward that should be account wide and into collections. Not the achievement. And interestingly enough, with Vampire, the level 10 Achievement goes away when the vampirism is cured - and the dye Stays. The next character that becomes a Vampire starts at level 1 (even if the first one was not cured).

The idea that it is the Player who is earning the achievement has always been silly. It is the Character's story. It is the Character's skills that apply. Character skills do Not apply to the Account. They are individual to the specific Character. Only things that character actually completes should be part of their achievements.

It is NOT the Player's Story. It is the unique Story of each individual Character that its created. And Each Character's spcific list of achievements should Only apply to that character.

A game should differentiate between Player and Character. Despite some of the random Dailies or Endeavors requiring us to kill Players, we do NOT Kill Players. ... Characters kill Characters.

alpha_synuclein

Very well thought through and insightful analysis.

ESO have a huge skill and knowledge gap and the way ZOS is trying to address it is completely missing the pain points, at least when it comes to group PVE.

Besides of what was said already, vast majority of teaching how to build successfully for harder content and play your role in a group is being outsourced to the player communities. Mostly veteran communities that keep dwindling... And instead of supporting them and creating incentives for players to join an actively participate in guilds, ZOS leans more towards improving solo experience. And since the expectation is that everyone should be able to do everything by themselves, regardless of the skill level, it's either the game will become more and more simplified or we keep getting overpowered gear to compensate, both of which will increase the skill gap even further.
And tbh to each their own, and if this approach stayed in overland it wouldn't hurt, but it seems like it's sipping into group play more and more.

Coming back to the OP, the big part of knowledge gap in PVE is strictly related to group play.
ESO's group content (at least the veteran and HM part) seems to be build around tank, healer and damage roles, but the game itself does zero to teach how to play anything but solo. And we keep getting solutions that seem to water down group play instead of strengthening it. First was Pale order, luckily reworked into what it was supposed to be, powerful solo tool that has no place in groups. Then we get stuff like Oakensoul, that, besides what was said already, provided tons of buffs that usually come from teammates. Again, good for solo, but the more passive buffs individuals can stack on themselves, the less incentive there is for sourcing them from teammates (as a DD) and learing how to keep their uptimes (as a support). Add overall buffs to survivability and sustain and we get trial pugs and a lot of beginner groups playing more like 12 solo players that happened to be in the same instance, rather than like an actual team.

Moreso, organized groups that can tackle the hardest content developed playstyle that is in direct opposition to the "play the way you want" approach, sometimes to the point where there is no such things as individual builds. The game enables it (why else would we get so many support sets with various buffs and debuffs that can be combined?) and the hardest content is very obviously designed with this level of coordination in mind. Yet the coordinated approach is largely seen as unattractive and as enforced by vet communities. Some reinforcement/validation of this playstyle coming directly from the game or devs would go a long way. Especially when we're getting things like scribing, marketed as ultimate tool to even more individualized builds. I get why it's appealing, but the way the game is handled right now, we have more and more disconnected groups of players that have very little space to meet halfway.

Lance_Caugheyb14_ESO

While this post is insightful and well written, I'd like to come to defense of Oakensoul from the perspective of a returning player with really bad hands.

When I played years ago I actually left the game as I began to get into end game content because I could not light attack weave comfortably. Oakensoul low button builds allow me to engage with end game content without being a burden to my team. While I'm sure some experienced players do use it to be "lazy", it's kind of an accessibility feature for some players.

sarahthes

barney2525 wrote: »

IMHO, if they did not have gear designed specifically and soley for PvP, they would have a lot more participants.

Players play the game and improve their gear as they go. Once they reach 50/160 they end up with a choice. Either keep playing PVE or switch over and play PvP. The gearing is completely different. And, where really high quality PVE gear can be crafted, not so much for PvP. That top gear has to be farmed.

If ALL the gear was equally effective, be it in PVE or PvP, players would more readily switch back and forth, and participate in both aspects, depending on what their mood was that day. If they knew their PVE gear was also top tier PvP, they would be glad to hop over to Cyradil now and then.

I think you have this backwards.

Most of my pvp gear is crafted (order's wrath/wretched/trickery/dragon's appetite/acuity etc) or purchased (rallying cry/deadly), aside from mythics and monster sets. Most of my pve gear is farmed from trials (sul xan, alkosh, coral, depths, ansuul, war machine, pillager, pearl, roaring opportunist, sax) or dungeons (aegis caller, azureblight, z'en, jorvuld, spc).

sarahthes

Lance_Caugheyb14_ESO wrote: »

While this post is insightful and well written, I'd like to come to defense of Oakensoul from the perspective of a returning player with really bad hands.

When I played years ago I actually left the game as I began to get into end game content because I could not light attack weave comfortably. Oakensoul low button builds allow me to engage with end game content without being a burden to my team. While I'm sure some experienced players do use it to be "lazy", it's kind of an accessibility feature for some players.

Light attack weaving is completely irrelevant in endgame, as everyone now uses the Velothi mythic due to its ease of use. I'd like to encourage you to explore other builds - as long as Velothi is relevant, you can get away with only light attacking once every 9 seconds (for ultimate generation).

Gabriel_H

The difference between a casual player and a hardmode player: The latter is willing to put in the work to understand not only a dungeon or trial mechanics, but also the underlying game mechanics. Of when penetration is better than crit, or when to switch at the cap, or to understand how the various passives play into block mitigation, or when to dodge instead of block, or how group dynamics between roles work etc etc etc.

This is not something unique to ESO/ZOS, it's how all big MMOs operate. If you want to do the harder content you need to put in the effort outside of just clicking a few buttons. The game is designed (i'd argue more by circumstance than design) that earlier release dungeons and trials are easier than later ones. This is due to the power creep that has come in due to the CP system.

An example of this: running vHRC at 160CP requires a lot more work than it does at 1600CP. Running vDSR at 160CP is just not viable in terms of comparative damage or mitigation or healing, nor should it be. Newer non-overland content is designed to be harder to address the issue of not only power creep, but also keeping older players engaged.

Older PvE guilds have long moved on from Craglorn. While this means that they won't be looking to take on new players, there are plenty of new players to be able to create their own guilds, to learn together, to progress together - but again this requires the player to put in the effort.

While the OP has some valid points, the overall message appears to be: Hand me things on a plate. No MMO works like that.

I would also add, there has always been a learning curve in Elder Scrolls games, it's one of the things lots of people love about them.

Gabriel_H

sarahthes wrote: »

Light attack weaving is completely irrelevant in endgame, as everyone now uses the Velothi mythic due to its ease of use. I'd like to encourage you to explore other builds - as long as Velothi is relevant, you can get away with only light attacking once every 9 seconds (for ultimate generation).

Arms of Relequen ... Whorl of the Depths ... !

sarahthes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The difference between a casual player and a hardmode player: The latter is willing to put in the work to understand not only a dungeon or trial mechanics, but also the underlying game mechanics. Of when penetration is better than crit, or when to switch at the cap, or to understand how the various passives play into block mitigation, or when to dodge instead of block, or how group dynamics between roles work etc etc etc.

This is not something unique to ESO/ZOS, it's how all big MMOs operate. If you want to do the harder content you need to put in the effort outside of just clicking a few buttons. The game is designed (i'd argue more by circumstance than design) that earlier release dungeons and trials are easier than later ones. This is due to the power creep that has come in due to the CP system.

An example of this: running vHRC at 160CP requires a lot more work than it does at 1600CP. Running vDSR at 160CP is just not viable in terms of comparative damage or mitigation or healing, nor should it be. Newer non-overland content is designed to be harder to address the issue of not only power creep, but also keeping older players engaged.

Older PvE guilds have long moved on from Craglorn. While this means that they won't be looking to take on new players, there are plenty of new players to be able to create their own guilds, to learn together, to progress together - but again this requires the player to put in the effort.

While the OP has some valid points, the overall message appears to be: Hand me things on a plate. No MMO works like that.

I would also add, there has always been a learning curve in Elder Scrolls games, it's one of the things lots of people love about them.

I think you're sort of missing the point. You're comparing it to an Elder Scrolls game... but ESO is also an MMO, and in most other MMOs you skip old content and go straight into the newest content, grinding only new content for relevant gear.

ESO is different - you basically need to wade through 10 years of content to get gear that is relevant for today. Even grinding the old content won't really help you for clearing old content, because that gear has been patched/changed/deprecated since early release, and builds from old content no longer work in old content. It is a waste of time and resources in ESO to farm anything other than the 'meta' or 'near meta' sets, at least if you are looking to complete group content in an organized group (which is what people who join ESO because it's an MMO tend to want to do).

Gabriel_H

sarahthes wrote: »

I think you're sort of missing the point. You're comparing it to an Elder Scrolls game... but ESO is also an MMO, and in most other MMOs you skip old content and go straight into the newest content, grinding only new content for relevant gear.

No I'm not. You read a passing comment in my last sentance and applied it to everything else I said.

Gabriel_H

sarahthes wrote: »

ESO is different - you basically need to wade through 10 years of content to get gear that is relevant for today. Even grinding the old content won't really help you for clearing old content, because that gear has been patched/changed/deprecated since early release, and builds from old content no longer work in old content.

Sorry but that is simply untrue. Go to any website that gives suggested builds and you'll see they include started builds using overland and crafted sets. These are easy to obtain and more than capable of taking on any CP160 content like vHRC.

sarahthes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I think you're sort of missing the point. You're comparing it to an Elder Scrolls game... but ESO is also an MMO, and in most other MMOs you skip old content and go straight into the newest content, grinding only new content for relevant gear.

No I'm not. You read a passing comment in my last sentance and applied it to everything else I said.

No I didn't. You said that newer/younger guilds should progress old content together, and my counterpoint was that they still have to run the newer content to get the gear for the older content - so it's still a barrier to entry.

I do agree with you that there are some people who just aren't willing or able to put in the work to improve. But you're kind of locked out of even doing old content without improving enough to farm new content for gear etc.

Gabriel_H

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I think you're sort of missing the point. You're comparing it to an Elder Scrolls game... but ESO is also an MMO, and in most other MMOs you skip old content and go straight into the newest content, grinding only new content for relevant gear.

No I'm not. You read a passing comment in my last sentance and applied it to everything else I said.

No I didn't. You said that newer/younger guilds should progress old content together, and my counterpoint was that they still have to run the newer content to get the gear for the older content - so it's still a barrier to entry.

No they don't. You want to run Craglorn trials as a stamina DD - go craft Hundings and farm some Briarheart from Wrothgar.

You want some Pillar of Nirn for harder content, run some normal FH and save up transmute crystals to recontruct with the traits you want.

Heck you can even do that approach with trial gear - even nDSR goes not require hundreds of CP or the best gear. Farm the non-perfected gear, save up transmute crystals, reconstruct.

None of that is difficult. It does require work though.

Gabriel_H

Gabriel_H wrote: »

None of that is difficult. It does require work though.

Let me put it like this. I came back a couple of months ago after a nearly 3 year absence.

I had overland sets from Clockwork City and Northern Elsweyr.

I hadn't tanked a vet trial in 3 years, and I had not tanked a vet trial outside of craglorn ever.

Two months later, I have the best trial sets and dungeon sets in the game for tanking, and I regularly tank vDSR and will be attempting HM this week.

sarahthes

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I think you're sort of missing the point. You're comparing it to an Elder Scrolls game... but ESO is also an MMO, and in most other MMOs you skip old content and go straight into the newest content, grinding only new content for relevant gear.

No I'm not. You read a passing comment in my last sentance and applied it to everything else I said.

No I didn't. You said that newer/younger guilds should progress old content together, and my counterpoint was that they still have to run the newer content to get the gear for the older content - so it's still a barrier to entry.

No they don't. You want to run Craglorn trials as a stamina DD - go craft Hundings and farm some Briarheart from Wrothgar.

You want some Pillar of Nirn for harder content, run some normal FH and save up transmute crystals to recontruct with the traits you want.

Heck you can even do that approach with trial gear - even nDSR goes not require hundreds of CP or the best gear. Farm the non-perfected gear, save up transmute crystals, reconstruct.

None of that is difficult. It does require work though.

PIllar of Nirn is from DLC that has to be purchased, and is separate from the most current DLC.

Briarheart is from DLC that has to be purchased, and is separate from the most current DLC. You can buy it, it's tradeable, but its a lot harder to find these days as the content isnt new/relevant and the gear isnt worth as much (so fewer people are selling it).

Dreadsail is located in DLC that has to be purchased, and is separate from the most current DLC.

I'm not talking about difficulty gating things. I'm taking about having to spend money on old content to clear new content, as someone new to the game.