Official Night Market Feedback Thread

MoonlightDeity · May 1

First of all, the Night Market is the best thing that's happened in ESO since Tribute was introduced. I am having so much fun both challenging it solo and exploring it with groups of friends and strangers. It's like playing before One Tamriel again, and I'm loving every second. This is the challenge we needed. I don't care how many people complain about it. It's a learning curve for sure, but you can't always cater to the players who want to be able to mindlessly light attack their way through every fight. Please keep this awesome event zone coming back many times.

There are only a few issues I have with it, but they can easily be fixed:

• The scoring. With the majority of players joining the Thousand Eyes, it is very unbalanced and kinda unfair for those of us who picked a different faction. I propose that the scoring gets adjusted to follow a model similar to the one used in Cyrodiil, where the underdogs get a boost to their earnings if the population difference is massive. Just to keep it competitive.

• The progression order to reach the dungeons and then the trial is a bit confusing. I wish it was explained better in the game. Especially how each player has to get the keys and the groups of four then have to combine to a group of twelve.

• I have noticed some bugs. Getting targeted while in ghost mode, quest objectives not spawning in properly, etc. I'm sure this will be remedied as more reports come in.

• The collision on some of the "bazaar" structures should be fixed. There's like a threshold you have to jump over, and the visuals don't properly convey this. I've died countless times when i haven't been able to run through a seemingly open arch while being chased by enemies.

GuardianV · May 1

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

...
@Personofsecrets Faction choice is irrelevant. You can group with anyone from any faction. You can share quest with anyone from any faction. And you can advance quest objectives together with anyone from any faction. Factions have literally zero impact on gameplay....

So I must ask: why bother having factions? What is the purpose of these factions to the game, lore-wise or story-wise? Why choose one faction over the others if it really doesn't matter?

Giving the benefit of the doubt, I would assume they took the idea from the 3 factions for Cyrodiil and tried to copy that. But if that was the idea, it fails because were you have Cyrodiil that refreshes monthly year after year, this is a short term event. I pointed this out the first night that 1 faction had 4x the Faction score as the other 2 and it has held true till now. On PC EU Thousand Eyes has 21mill, while the other barely have 5 mill, and they have been pacing the at the same 4x rate the whole time. This means they probably have 4x the players, and will never be cause by the other 2, so if you are just now joining, go for Thousand Eyes if you want to be on the winning team. I sadly will be on one of the other teams. If they really wanted to make this a balanced event, they should have the total faction scores divided by the number of people in the faction. That way it matters more how dedicated you are, not just who has more players.

From a pessimistic (historical) perspective, the whole reason for factions would be so things can be locked behind other releases. Personally I'm just going to sit this one out. I have about 700 favor after 2 days and its not worth it for someone who doesn't already have a dedicated group they play with. (If I did have a dedicated group I regularly ran with, this would actually be a lot more fun). But Next time, I'm just going to wait a few days to see which faction is in the lead and join that one.

GuardianV · May 1

There's been a lot of criticism about this even (from myself included) but from what I am seeing on the posts and what I have experienced, the problem is not the event itself, but how it works.

IF
You have a group that you run with and can coordinate with: This event is for you.
IF
You already have everything else done in the game and want a break from the same daily tasks: This event is for you.
IF
You like to spend hour outside of the game watch reviews and how-to videos: This even is for you.
IF
You want something challenging to do with your group that is not a typical Dungeon, Trial or PVP: This even is for you.

This is a brand new idea; something that has never been done before and from the people medium to large size groups, this has been enjoyable.

BUT
This was also marketed as something you can do if you do not have a group. That's not to say you can solo this, there is plenty in this game that you just cannot do as a solo player, but rather you can get a group of random people together and run as a group of strangers.

THE PROBLEM IS
There is no group creator for this even. There is no in-game Chat to talk to strangers who are not going to stop and setup a third party chat for 15 minutes with a random stranger. There are either not enough players in there or at least not enough players that respond to group requests from strangers.
So if you do not already have a group when you get to the night market: This event is not for you.

THE PROBLEM IS
This is a very grindy experience that will take several, as in 20-60, hours of play to get the 10k Favor; let alone all the drops for progression and all the achievements. This is even more grindy if you have to spend 30 minutes running around trying to form a group to not get killed. This is a limited time even for about 7 weeks. Depending on how long you have to play, you could spend the entire time in here trying to get things complete before it leave and that time would have been wasted.
So if you still have other zones to finish, gear to farm, levels to grind: This event is (probably) not for you.

THE PROBLEM IS
This is not much explanation in game or even from the ESO website that explains what to do for the challenges, how to to the challenges, how and where to farm the needed fragments to progress the Night Market. So all of that has to be research outside of the game. At least with dungeons there is an attempt to show you the mechanics in game. There are also so many different quests and challenges and events that people need to do at different times that if you are in a random group, you will just get left behind.
So if you haven't already watched other content creator explain the night market (and there are some good ones if you want that) and you don't have a group that is willing to wait for everyone to do their own thing: This event is not for you.

**Also side note: Dying and respawning half a map away from your group with several large groups of enemies between you, is just a punch in the Dragon Balls. If you are going to make content and tell people it's not made for a solo player, then why have a feature that forces you to play as a solo player to rejoin your group?

In summary: The content is just fine. It's new, it's different, it a deviation from the norm, and that was executed well. The problem is:
1. How we access the content, if we do not already have a dedicated group
2. Information on what to do in there
3. The limited time to do an event this complex

AnnaMolly66 · May 1

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

AnnaMolly66 wrote: »

liliub17_ESO wrote: »

AnnaMolly66 wrote: »

Re: "silence from the devs"

They aren't going to say anything yet, we're still in public testing and evaluation phase, they're likely looking over the forums for bug complaints, watching metrics, and making hot fixes as necessary. I do hope they're listening to feedback because there are issues with the event but that's more incentives and such.

The content is live, notably *not* "in public testing and evaluation phase".

It's not the content being tested.

Ok. If not the content, then are they testing the player base? Because those are your options. The daedra don't care.

They're evaluating how the community performs, clears, and responds to the content. Hence the watching metrics, recently announcing a world first deathless clear, etc

tomofhyrule · May 1

GuardianV wrote: »

THE PROBLEM IS
There is no group creator for this even. There is no in-game Chat to talk to strangers who are not going to stop and setup a third party chat for 15 minutes with a random stranger. There are either not enough players in there or at least not enough players that respond to group requests from strangers.

But… those things do exist.

The Group Finder they added a few patches ago is a thing, and they even added a new classification for “Event Zone” just for this. Anyone can make an entry and even set it to autoinvite to groups.
True, there is no queuing system. But there is a group finder that allows people to start or find groups.

Also, in-game chat is also a thing. People don’t need to use a third-party voice chat to zerg.

Sir_Donkey_Kong · May 1

Needed Skirmish in sorrows. Entered and exited three times til I found one with that Skirmish active. Formed a group over ten minutes. They arrived and we had to fight the traveling boss. Killed it then turned around and was now inactive. There was no indication that this was going to happen. A complete waste of time for me and everyone in the group. If it's going to go inactive there should be some indication of how long before it does.

Ingel_Riday · May 1

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

Update: finally had an hour today to try it out.

Core plaza was dead. Just a few people running here or there. There's no dungeon finder functionality, because why add convenience to forced grouping? So I went to the group finder where people can list their groups. Only five groups listed, none for the section that my intro quest was in.

@Ingel_Riday Try making a group yourself in the group finder. They fill extremely quickly.

You do not need a trial group or guild. The Night Market is very puggable with 12 randoms from the group finder.

Heya! Wanted to chime in real quick. Honestly, thanks for the advice. You didn't mock me or belittle me. You were constructive and courteous. I appreciate you, dude. You're a good egg. (I mean that, by the way. No internet sarcasm here. You're good and I wanted to say it out loud)

The above having been said, I unsubbed, took some pictures of my characters for nostalgia, and uninstalled this game at long last. I'm done. I have nothing left in my tank.

I'm kind of grateful for the Night Market, though. It gave me the push that I needed. This sounds like a rom-com kind of thing, but I've been unhappy for a very long time. The writing has gotten so bad over the years that I literally have to mute the dialogue and turn off subtitles to be able to force myself through West Weald and the High Isle main quest. The FOMO chorelists and FOMO timed events have just gotten more and more egregious with every passing month. I get like two weeks out of every two months where I'm actually able to have fun. Otherwise, it's logging in to do 15 to 20 minutes of endeavor/battleplass chores, do 15 to 20 minutes of event chores, and then logging off in pure disgust for the rest of the day. Rinse and repeat for literal years.

Oh, I could just ignore the FOMO, sure... is what people say, but this game has spent five years training me to NEVER ignore it. To never miss out, no matter how much the activity sucked. No matter how tedious or dull the event was designed to be. Don't miss out. It 100% worked. I even took my laptop to Amsterdam back in 2024 to do the FOMO that they assigned us during their own in-person anniversary event. ZOS didn't even give us a break for that. I used my cellphone as a wifi hotspot because the hotel wifi was utterly suspect and had to bring a big ol' adapter so that my laptop didn't explode from the foreign voltage differences.

I've never missed a FOMO event before this, in part because I knew that if I did miss one, that'd be it. The moment I couldn't force myself through a FOMO event, the spell would be broken and I'd ditch.

Here we are. I'm not forcing myself through this poorly-designed and ill-conceived garbage. Kind of a relief, really. I've had my fun. I don't regret the $1,900 or so that I've spent per annum on dumb fluff (It adds up REAL fast. $149.99 ESO+ subscription, $149.99 every 4 months on loot crates to power through the RNG and get what you want, $100 or so per month on costumes and motifs and mounts, $100 or so per annum on expansions and dungeon packs). I don't gamble or do weird drugs or party. This was my one excessive vice, and boy was it excessive. Assuming that a ZOS employee costs $150k per annum to employ (including pay and benefits), I have funded 1/79th of a person every year for quite a while. That's absurd whale behavior, if you think about it.

And man, the value of it was just dying alongside my morale. I haven't touched my dragonknight main since the rework, because why bother? The changes to the class were so radical that ZOS is going to spend the next two years smacking it with a mallet. Why bother learning how to play my guy again when it won't matter in six months? That's how much faith I have left. None. Nada. Zilch.

It's time for me to go. I see that now. This was exactly what I needed to finally make the move. There's some positive feedback from me about the Night Market. You are most welcome, haha.

Anyway, wasting your time rambling. Sorry about that! Best of luck to you all. I'm out. I'm going to go play Marvel's Spider-Man 2018 as a bit of a palate cleanser and then move on with my life. :-)

Tzirzhalir · May 1

Valentyne wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Oh my god, I now understand who this is for!

Pvpers! They seem to love it!

Looking at similarities between NM & GH can see why……🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Seriously, its Friday evening and NO ONE on my pvp guild is in Cyro. Bit sad really.

You clearly have not played Cyrodil to any real capacity if you're comparing it to Night Market lol. Most people that PvP are long time players so yea they're probably going to be checking out new content like myself for the mythic. A lot of pvpers are also involved in trial guilds and doing trifectas because again, long time experienced players often end up in pvp and are good pvpers because both pvp and pve require knowledge of rotations, sets, skills, etc.

It would be like me comparing Night Market to Elsweyr events because 500 people zerg down the Dragons before they even get a chance to land. It's going to happen in any area where you can have more than 12 people fighting a boss.

Aside from that, I'm seeing a lot of pure pvers mad at Night Market because stuff is too difficult for small groups or solo. It was advertised as group content for I don't even know how long. You can literally go to Activity Finder > Find Group > Event Zone and join at any given time at least 5 different groups doing different areas in the zone.

While the content is quite lack luster there is plenty of options to go about doing it as a solo. I opted to gear up my NB healer and have had 0 issue running around the zones healing groups or just joining groups to do the content.

At this point I now have all the keys for the Opulent Trial as a mostly solo player and have had quite literally 0 issues getting them by using the tools the game provided.

I get people are always going to find something to be frustrated about in a game this large, but the game also has to provide to everyone which is does a rather good job of doing, sadly not all content is going to be specifically catered to one person's opinion and is going to require you to change builds, join groups, learn new mechanics, and actually do more than just heavy attack with a build you put together off Youtube.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Miss know it all lol

Soarora · May 1

Feedback number..... I think I'm on #4? This time is part 1 of a more solo experience. I intend to do some loose grouping/joining group finder runs and post feedback on that too.

I forgot to mention this but the chests are really sad. One person per chest makes it feel bad to even touch any of the chests as a group. Maybe let anyone open the chest within like a minute before it despawns?

Logged in today and a guildie asked for help with a specific boss, once again I am on my overland build. They created a group finder listing and I was shocked to see it fill within minutes. Everyone got to the boss location, we killed the boss, and went on to kill 3 more bosses. It was a great time, at least from my perspective. I am concerned though in that a lot of people were ressing at the oasis, even when the bosses were low health and from previous experience, I think this takes you out of the fight and unable to get loot, even though the rest of the group is in the fight. I'm not 100% certain though.

Soloing the trash goes alright, it's quite fun. Granted, I am an endgame player, a tank at that, so I have some roll dodge and blocking instincts. Some trash packs are too hard for me to solo with my build I think. Even adding major resolve and major protection, the big adds (Realmshapers at least) 1-shot me. I think the health of the enemies is fine, but consider reducing the outgoing damage of the big adds a bit so that it's an almost-1-shot and not a 1-shot. That way, people who build for defense have less danger (so it's still better than going in on an overland build) but people in overland builds have a chance if they're good at healing themselves quickly and not standing in stacked AoEs.

My frost warden fared a bit better, killing a trash with a realmshaper. But larger trash (it also had Dranos ghosts in it) was too much. I am feeling the nerf from PTS though, I got shredded in seconds on pts. The image below is from a trash I successfully killed to show my skill usage. I forgot to do that for the first image.

My arcanist of course has the most damage and I was able to mow down the packs with no big add effectively but realmshapers still slaughtered me.

Overall between those 3 builds, I think my takeaway is this:
Keep the small health trash the same but decrease the damage dealt by realmshapers/dranos ghosts/etc. to put them more in-line with the other trash enemies. The large spiders here (I only did Skittering for this test) were well-balanced-- I could die to them but it felt more fair.

lagrue · May 1

I've commented a few times over the days but I've made more progress and have more to say.

RNG Splinters remains some BS, I think it should be done away with. I've gotten them now.

I don't know what I expected... but the "Dungeons" just being a single boss in a circle room was not it. Very underwhelming.

Trial has a decent mechanic cadence. Can't say it was the most fun I've ever had, but its also the first Trial I've done so idk how it fairly stacks up to others.

I think Nightmarket could use a Normal and Veteran mode (with what we have now being Veteran for the cheeky lads out there).

It should also just be a permanent addition to the game and players should learn the fundamentals of grouping and group play in the Normal Mode there. Imo one of the biggest failures of this game is the complete lack of a throughline between Solo Overworld Play and Group Content Play. This game needs to teach group roles and mechanics much earlier and this content COULD be used for that if it was designed to have a much more accessible mode.

Rewards need to be looked at across the board. Gear drops are trash. And the XP and Gold gains for the time spent are laughable.

Lastly I think the whole scoring system is... well... not it.

There's potential here, but its a long way from being met.

Al_Ex_Andre · May 1

Well second impression is that I am okay with the Night Market. I did read some guides though like what to do with the Race thingy, ah gotcha, just do it 3 times on 3 things and hurry up...

I joined numerous group on group finders, and managed to do my things. But I am on a hurry, because the hype will not last and there will less groups for the night market the weeks that will come (but I have some time still).

I did also every single secondary quest, and won't do them again, now. I died so many times for that, that I don't want to continue doing them

, as I have the success already. (-1 for needing group for quests u cannot necessary share though)

Next goal is to find groups for the gold boss'es, I hope I will find them easy in the group finder the days that come, because I am a solo player (how original

) and I don't have a dedicated guild to clear content like that.

Now, after the gold dungeons and then the trial, it will be a boss grind, it will take some few days, and the daily quests success need to be achieved anyway, and I am ready.

I am also confident now that I will finish the Golden Pursuit final reward, which was not a given in my head two days before, but yes, will do that.

Overall the Night Market reminds me some special zones in World of Warcraft, the Timeless Isle or Ashran, which I loved. ESO could use some inspiration from these, further along the road, for future content, and it would be a hit.

AnnieK · May 1

This content is not for me so guess I can't really give any feedback other than for me it's another game addition I don't care for as they all have been recently. Last game addition I really liked was Telvanni.

Dojohoda · May 1

On account #3 I decided to try sneaking to do the first quest that one is given after choosing a faction. I put together a sneaking build for a Nightblade.
5 medium, 2 light, 2 daggers, swift jewelry, The Steed mundus, vampire for the sneak speed

ring of the wild hunt,
1 monster set piece that gives recoveries, either head or shoulder
5 pieces adept rider, all white quality, divines, (I crafted legs, feet, hands, waist, and shoulder)
3 pieces night terror- 1 dagger, neck, and ring (blue quality)
2 trainee- medium chest, dagger
Backbar-anything you think would help, I put a resto staff there

Anyway, there might be better options, but this created a fast moving character that was able to do that first quest, pick up a few more quests along the way and complete those as well. I died twice and, of course, did not kill anything with this build lulz.

So after that, for the gold box, I needed to do the daily which requires being in a group, in my case anyway. So, I wanted to switch the build to a healer using the saved build in the armory. I placed the armory in the night market house along with storage containers. I switched the build to a healer, joined a group and got the daily done. Also, I shared the daily since that is one that can be shared.

I am trying.

Syldras · May 1

Feedback for third evening (and perhaps a bit encouragement for struggling players):

A little less progress today - yesterday I got 750 favor, today only 675 (Note: I don't have much time for gaming, so we're talking about circa 1 to 2.5 hours per evening here). Is it meagre for that amount of time? I don't know. But what I think matters is: Even if it was only 500 a day, the 5000 points to unlock the bank vault would be reached in 10 days. The maximum favor to be able to buy every item at the faction merchant is 10000. So that would be at most 20 days, the event is running for 2 months - that looks absolutely achievable to me. And I gain most favor not by combat, but by just running around questing. As long as a soloist is able to move around in the combat areas, that's enough to get the bank and unlock all available furnishings for sale in between 2 and 3 weeks (with combat even much faster - but what I wanted to note is that even if you don't do combat, you can achieve this).

Side note: The visibility of quest markers is still horrible. Missing people and propaganda, especially.

I still have the same tactics like the past few days: Running around in the combat zones, doing quests (both from the plaza as well as the combat zone ones - the armor drops in those boxes are trash, but you get favor at least), and while roaming the map I keep my eyes open for other players and join in during fights when ever possible. What I noticed is that I barely take damage while just moving around in the Spider District - what ever it's called in English - anymore, probably because I know the map by now and can easily outrun the mobs (I need to heal noticeably more in those other two zones I've havent done much in yet - it really is a question of practice).

Apart from gaining favor, I had planned for this evening to get the remaining 3 fragments for the Eye of Arac - from 2 bronze and 1 silver boss, so a very straightforward task. Unfortunately, the joys of human interaction prevented it. When I logged in, the silver boss was currently active - I joined in, but at some point, the group just scattered?! Later, I tried again when another group was there, we had halved the boss' hp, then some person pulled it away and it resetted. Instead of trying again, the majority of people ragequitted, ran off or teleported out. With no one left, then I decided to take a break, too.

When I logged in again, that silver boss was gone, but the two bronze bosses were there. I stood there and waited for more people. No one came. People ran past, no one joined. I moved to the roof top nearby - one person standing around there, but afk. Later, there was a whole group of people standing around on the roof - doing who knows what, but completely unreactive. No reaction to chat. No joining in when I headed for the boss. They just stood there on the roof and did nothing. I waited for a whole while, nothing happened (now, consider what that means if the player cap for an instance is 36 and then there are whole groups just standing around afk - not blaming them, maybe they're not even aware of the player cap, but for group content with a player cap, that is a problem, of course). In the end, I logged off. Maybe I'm luckier tomorrow.

I got 3 fragments for another artifact today, at least (2 for boss fights, 1 from the quest box).

ectoplasmicninja · May 1

Having gone back in and finished the intro quests (as informed here) and gotten actual dailies that contribute at least somewhat to my faction favour, I am having a better time. The in-game onboarding was not great and without code65536's guide I would not still be participating in this event.

If you don't have a guild or a group, the group finder is clutch for this activity. There are a ton of groups always being created and filling and serving various purposes. Without it, you'd have no idea which district everyone was in and most people would have to just zoom invisibly around to get the district quests done for the pursuit. I had to join a good dozen groups today just to get the last few bosses I needed for the relics to unlock the wings of the house.

This fragment business is also a bit much. Get splinters to create relics to unlock wings. Kill brazen bosses to kill argent bosses to get keys to unlock dungeons to kill gilded bosses to unlock the trial. I mean, I get it now, but I had to read a forum guide and most players aren't on the forums. A casual player hopping in to check it out is very likely to be put off. I'd be super curious to see the retention rate of how many players entered the Night Market and actually stuck around.

thechalkdust · May 1

Been running Night Market a lot since release. Some solo, some small group, some large group. ~6500 favor.

Overall, the new content is really cool. I'm loving the difficulty level and ad hoc coordination between groups. It feels like this is what Craglorn was supposed to be, an open zone requiring group play for the difficult bits.

Main complaint: consuming keys makes coordinating a full 12-man team ridiculous. Requiring the keys is not the problem. But consuming the keys creates a logistical nightmare for raid teams. Getting everyone together on the same page is too tedious, and it takes so long that you can lose half the group before collecting the keys that one player needed. The logistical bar is too high already, and will only get worse as participation drops off.

Minor complaint: randos who don't know wtf they are doing are capable of screwing up the mechanics on skirmish fights. Our group was stalled by randos grabbing the motes and not attuning the rods, for example. Mechanics should avoid punishing groups for the actions of randos.

Bonus complaint: not enough population! It's awesome when groups team up on a tough encounter, but that doesn't happen enough at these population levels. It's fun running into other solo players or small groups, but there are not enough of them. Raise the population cap per zone!

A few bugs:
1) Single-target abilities randomly busted. (Or is that a feature?)
2) Disconnected during the werewolf fight hunt mechanic, causing the werewolf to get stuck and unable to progress for the team left behind.
3) The duneripper got stuck unkillable after his insides were all busted.
4) Respawned on the rooftop once, and immediately died again while already dead (died in ghost form). It was the most dead I have ever been. Was permanently stuck dead until relogging.

shadoza · May 1

HuciturGuru wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom just wanted to bring your attention to an image claiming to be from ZOS making the rounds. Obviously you can see its fake but paints ZOS in a bad way

I think it i kind of funny and very well done.

ESO_player123 · May 1

Now that I have the relics I decided to try the oddities. It would be great if the timer was reduced. I'm trying to do the guiding light by myself and need to figure it out. Waiting 5 min just for another attempt seems like a gigantic waste of time. It's not like the puzzles give uber loot every time they are solved.

GuardianV · May 2

Also, in-game chat is also a thing. People don’t need to use a third-party voice chat to zerg. [/quote]

in-game (voice) chat is not a thing on PC.

GuardianV · May 2

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom just wanted to bring your attention to an image claiming to be from ZOS making the rounds. Obviously you can see its fake but paints ZOS in a bad way[/quote]

I think it i kind of funny and very well done. [/quote]

Had this been a year ago, it would have been a lot more believable. But they have done a really good job this last year in communicating with the community. Also, yeah. Wish this had been the first post to start the forum. I'm goin to grab a flashlight and look for some grass to touch.

blktauna · May 2

GuardianV wrote: »

Also, in-game chat is also a thing. People don’t need to use a third-party voice chat to zerg.

in-game chat is not a thing on PC.

I can read pc chat just fine, the problem is none of the randos do.

Its very obvious which people have bever done a dungeon before because they don't recognise the bosses and their mechanics at all. Also the amount of trash training is appalling. Have some consideration.

Estin · May 2

I am back to give more feedback, this time for the dungeons and the trial.

For the dungeons, I thought they were ok. I did them as a first time tanker since there was a huge tank shortage. Overall, two of them were pretty easy, but one of them I found too difficult. A problem I've noticed in all of the dungeons was that there was no battle music, so the fights felt kind of anti climatic because of it. My biggest gripe about the dungeons were finding people for it. I will make a group finder listing and would constantly get clueless players who would join and not have the relic, forcing me to relist the group finder. I even made it clear in the listing that the relic was needed and linked the achievement. That didn't stop people from not reading and joining without the relic. I feel there needs to be a better way to get a dungeon going to prevent headaches.

I'll rank the dungeons from easiest to hardest.

Mournful Catacomb: This was the easiest dungeon by far. The boss didn't do much damage, and there weren't too many adds spawning. The adds also did not do much damage. I was able to do this dungeon as the tank with 3 DD. The best feedback I can give to this dungeon is don't show the portal mechanic to the tank. I synergized the green circle as the tank when it first showed up since no one else did and ended up in the portal. The portal only accepts 1 player and you cannot leave unless you die which is what I had to end up doing so some one else can enter it.
Timeless Wallow: This was my favorite dungeon, especially the way the arena was designed. I feel like the difficulty was just right too. I wasn't blessed with a good group DD wise. Total group DPS was about 25k, and as the tank, I was doing about 15-20% of the group damage. Despite this, it only took the group I was with 2 tries to beat it. The mechanics were pretty intuitive, and adds only spawn at a % and don't respawn once dead which made the fight feel clean. The feedback I could give for this dungeon is to make the crushing darkness mechanic work how it does in cloudrest. The crushing darkness in this dungeon targets the DDs rather than the tank and the furthest away player. The DDs in my group kept dying to the mechanic because they weren't great with kite mechanics, but also because it did enough damage to one shot them before they can react, probably because they were stacked which also stacked the mechanic on them. As the tank, there was nothing I could do about that.
Gossamer Crypt: This was the hardest dungeon by far for me. So much so that I had to swap to DD in order to get it down. Again for this dungeon, I wasn't blessed with a good group DD wise. Group DPS was the same as Timeless Wallow, but this time I was doing about 30% of the group damage. When I swapped to DD and had someone else tank, it was better because I could put out damage, but I still feel like the mechanics for this dungeon are overtuned compared to the other two. As the tank, my issues with this dungeon was the frequent enrage mechanic which seemed to have enraged everything. I will do the mechanic to unenrage the boss, but it will become enraged again within 15 seconds. On top of this, the two adds spawned about every 30 seconds after dying, and can actually be pretty dangerous with their heavy attacks on top of the enraged boss and lightning strikes happening throughout the entire fight. I think the biggest issue with this fight was the spider that spawned every minute. I don't know if it's linked to the enrage mechanic, but whenever it spawned and was glowing red, there were about 5 smaller spiders wiping the DDs. The DDs that I had when I was a tank didn't have enough damage to prevent someone from dying, usually the healer, when they were being pulled, and they were also being pulled back by the boss which required me to place the boss on top of the spider so they wouldn't get pulled in by the boss. The feedback I would give for this boss is to lower the frequency of the enrage mechanic, and lower the health of the spider and 2 adds. When I was my DD, it wasn't so bad. I alone was doing about 100k DPS on the spider each time it spawned, so having 2 good DDs will make the fight a breeze, but this is an event zone and most of the DDs someone will get as tank will be a roleplayer who can't do damage making the fight a slog.

For the trial, I found it really fun. It only took the group I found 2 tries, but I liked the flow of the fight. I was fortunately blessed with people who knew mostly what to do, and that is going to be the key phrase here. I'd imagine if I got into the trial again with people who didn't know what to do, it will be really chaotic. It's on par with a regular vet trial around 2018-2020, so it's not too difficult, but I can see that it requires a lot of coordination. But like with any trial, people should come prepared. I wouldn't change anything about the mechanics for this trial even if I don't fully understand the orb passing mechanic, but outside that, it flows really well when people know what to do. It's also interesting for this dungeon to need 3 tanks and 9 DD with. I suspect healers aren't too happy about that. The would no doubt be helpful in execute, but there isn't too much incoming damage and DDs with self heals will be more than enough to get through it. My only feedback I would give is to make the grapple poles easier to target, mostly on the purple side. After passing/picking up the orb from the purple side, you can go back to the large island directly in front, and then there is a pole high up on the island immediately to the left, but it was too inconsistent with being able to target it. I usually had to run up the ramp on the larger island first to be able to target it, but outside that, I felt everything was designed really well.

anadandy · May 2

Syldras wrote: »

Side note: The visibility of quest markers is still horrible. Missing people and propaganda, especially.

I completely agree! It's very frustrating to fight your way through multiple tough mobs and spend several moments hunting for some quest item (in my case animal cages). Especially with the crazy fast respawn rates. And one circle was right in a boss area too.

silky_soft · May 2

Disgustingly laggy just like any pvp or vet maelstrom arena.

Also there is no one here.

maravana · May 2

The starting quest is bugged.

Ridiculous.

cmetzger93 · May 2

Estin wrote: »

I am back to give more feedback, this time for the dungeons and the trial.

For the dungeons, I thought they were ok. I did them as a first time tanker since there was a huge tank shortage. Overall, two of them were pretty easy, but one of them I found too difficult. A problem I've noticed in all of the dungeons was that there was no battle music, so the fights felt kind of anti climatic because of it. My biggest gripe about the dungeons were finding people for it. I will make a group finder listing and would constantly get clueless players who would join and not have the relic, forcing me to relist the group finder. I even made it clear in the listing that the relic was needed and linked the achievement. That didn't stop people from not reading and joining without the relic. I feel there needs to be a better way to get a dungeon going to prevent headaches.

I'll rank the dungeons from easiest to hardest.
Mournful Catacomb: This was the easiest dungeon by far. The boss didn't do much damage, and there weren't too many adds spawning. The adds also did not do much damage. I was able to do this dungeon as the tank with 3 DD. The best feedback I can give to this dungeon is don't show the portal mechanic to the tank. I synergized the green circle as the tank when it first showed up since no one else did and ended up in the portal. The portal only accepts 1 player and you cannot leave unless you die which is what I had to end up doing so some one else can enter it.

Timeless Wallow: This was my favorite dungeon, especially the way the arena was designed. I feel like the difficulty was just right too. I wasn't blessed with a good group DD wise. Total group DPS was about 25k, and as the tank, I was doing about 15-20% of the group damage. Despite this, it only took the group I was with 2 tries to beat it. The mechanics were pretty intuitive, and adds only spawn at a % and don't respawn once dead which made the fight feel clean. The feedback I could give for this dungeon is to make the crushing darkness mechanic work how it does in cloudrest. The crushing darkness in this dungeon targets the DDs rather than the tank and the furthest away player. The DDs in my group kept dying to the mechanic because they weren't great with kite mechanics, but also because it did enough damage to one shot them before they can react, probably because they were stacked which also stacked the mechanic on them. As the tank, there was nothing I could do about that.

Gossamer Crypt: This was the hardest dungeon by far for me. So much so that I had to swap to DD in order to get it down. Again for this dungeon, I wasn't blessed with a good group DD wise. Group DPS was the same as Timeless Wallow, but this time I was doing about 30% of the group damage. When I swapped to DD and had someone else tank, it was better because I could put out damage, but I still feel like the mechanics for this dungeon are overtuned compared to the other two. As the tank, my issues with this dungeon was the frequent enrage mechanic which seemed to have enraged everything. I will do the mechanic to unenrage the boss, but it will become enraged again within 15 seconds. On top of this, the two adds spawned about every 30 seconds after dying, and can actually be pretty dangerous with their heavy attacks on top of the enraged boss and lightning strikes happening throughout the entire fight. I think the biggest issue with this fight was the spider that spawned every minute. I don't know if it's linked to the enrage mechanic, but whenever it spawned and was glowing red, there were about 5 smaller spiders wiping the DDs. The DDs that I had when I was a tank didn't have enough damage to prevent someone from dying, usually the healer, when they were being pulled, and they were also being pulled back by the boss which required me to place the boss on top of the spider so they wouldn't get pulled in by the boss. The feedback I would give for this boss is to lower the frequency of the enrage mechanic, and lower the health of the spider and 2 adds. When I was my DD, it wasn't so bad. I alone was doing about 100k DPS on the spider each time it spawned, so having 2 good DDs will make the fight a breeze, but this is an event zone and most of the DDs someone will get as tank will be a roleplayer who can't do damage making the fight a slog.

For the trial, I found it really fun. It only took the group I found 2 tries, but I liked the flow of the fight. I was fortunately blessed with people who knew mostly what to do, and that is going to be the key phrase here. I'd imagine if I got into the trial again with people who didn't know what to do, it will be really chaotic. It's on par with a regular vet trial around 2018-2020, so it's not too difficult, but I can see that it requires a lot of coordination. But like with any trial, people should come prepared. I wouldn't change anything about the mechanics for this trial even if I don't fully understand the orb passing mechanic, but outside that, it flows really well when people know what to do. It's also interesting for this dungeon to need 3 tanks and 9 DD with. I suspect healers aren't too happy about that. The would no doubt be helpful in execute, but there isn't too much incoming damage and DDs with self heals will be more than enough to get through it. My only feedback I would give is to make the grapple poles easier to target, mostly on the purple side. After passing/picking up the orb from the purple side, you can go back to the large island directly in front, and then there is a pole high up on the island immediately to the left, but it was too inconsistent with being able to target it. I usually had to run up the ramp on the larger island first to be able to target it, but outside that, I felt everything was designed really well.

Agree that Gossamer Crypt is way harder than the other two and brought out the worst in my PUG.

acastanza_ESO · May 2

Okay, so like, the night market might be the best PVE thing ZOS has ever done.
The various bosses are tuned just right for a casual group with people that vaguely know how to do their roles and that mechanics exist. The skirmishes are super fun, I could even stand for them to have a few more phases.
It needs better rewards to keep people coming back, and it could stand to be a little more navigable for people trying to catch up to their groups, but I actually kinda think ZOS mostly nailed the actual mechanics of the zone here. It's great, first I'm I've actually enjoyed causal PVE in ESO in a long time.

jristaub17_ESO · May 2

I have only had three days playing here, so I'm not ready to make a full report yet.

BIGGEST SINGLE issue I have run into, though, so far, is the population cap. There is NO ONE around, in any instance, unless you group via Group Finder, and jump to the instance where the group is. Then, there is usually just that group there.

Why in the world is the population cap so low? A lot of people are looking to "solo" Night Market. You can sort of actually do that, by "mobbing" rather than grouping...just joining a mob of ungrouped players. The first day I played NM, that was what everything was...there seemed to be about 18-20 people in the instance I was in, all in the same district, and it was actually pretty easy to get around, get the quests done, etc.

However, days two and three, it seems like players are getting widely distributed across different server instances, or something? Or perhaps the limit of 30 people are being spread out more in all three districts? That leaves you with about 10 people per district, IF you have 30 people. So far, it seems like maybe there are about 10 people an instance tops, all spread out between the main area and the districts, so you usually only encounter a player here and there in any given district just occasionally... With the enemies all being designed for group play, if there are only a handful of people around at any given time, you can't really even go about "mobbing" with ungrouped players...there are just never enough of them.,

By limiting each NM server instance to just 30 people, you have SEVERELY restricted group or ungrouped "mobbing" play. You force people to look at the Group Finder, and thus far I've found most GF groups are looking to do something very specific...specific boss or bosses, in a specific district. That makes it very difficult to do anything else in any of the districts.

The ungrouped "mobbing" play is actually quite fun, you can run around, play with people ad-hoc, but still be somewhat independent and go after the various quests and complete their tasks. I only experienced this once...day 1. Dunno if somehow everyone ended up in a single instance, or if it was just that enough people were playing day 1 that there were enough players for that. It was very fun though, to play NM that way....and easier to get all the various questing done, heck, easier to try and do the oddities!

Days 2 and 3 here, I've had to join GF groups to accomplish anything. Each group had a specific goal, a boss or bosses, in a specific district. Usually once that goal was done, most of the players left. Some groups would re-start GF and list another boss, people would join, we'd do the boss then most of the group would leave. I must have joined a dozen groups that way, and managed to do only about half the quests in each district, because...well, you can't really get around solo, and if a group has a specific goal, most players aren't going to bother running around as a mob doing quest tasks.

Speaking of quests....another issue. The waypoint markers for quest tasks don't show up, until you are literally right on top of them. You can be feet from them, and you don't see a marker...you walk right in front of the poster or body or relic or whatever that you are supposed to activate, and the marker finally appears. This greatly hampers figuring out where to go to finish each quest, especially when you have to time completing them so quickly between groups killing the enemies and those enemies respawning (as that's usually the only way to get any of the quest tasks done when grouping via GF.)

Each server needs more than 30 people....what with there being the central zone where the factions are, as well as THREE different districts. With just 30 people, you might have just 3-5 people per district, some people in the central zone, and some maybe in their night's den. The place is large enough that 30 people can get so spread out, you don't encounter many at any given time. Even with GF grouping...people frequently leave the district to complete quests, or whatever, so even grouped, you often have less than 12 players actively playing in the group at times. Some people come back, some leave the group...

Just not enough people per server instance.

acastanza_ESO · May 2

jristaub17_ESO wrote: »

I have only had three days playing here, so I'm not ready to make a full report yet.

BIGGEST SINGLE issue I have run into, though, so far, is the population cap. There is NO ONE around, in any instance, unless you group via Group Finder, and jump to the instance where the group is. Then, there is usually just that group there.

I think that's kind of the point, they want you to group up in group finder to go into the area with intent. And the lower pop caps ensure that groups aren't competing with each other for the bosses and end up waiting for respawns.

allochthons · May 2

To get the the Scoreboard on Console, D-Pad Right, and Circle.
To scroll through the maps to find the active skirmish, use L1/R1 (bumpers).

---

I had better experiences in the Night Market after my first post in this thread, especially since reading Code's helpful guide.

Difficulty:
I can appreciate that it is meant to be hard. And a lot of my friends are enjoying that a lot. A lot of my other friends are so frustrated. But here's the thing: This is some of the main content we're getting this year. No other dungeons. No trial until Crimson Veldt is released. No new zone. THIS was advertised as the thing to hold us over. Okay, great! But if %50 of the player base can't play it because it's too difficult, they are really getting shafted.

---

It is generally a lot more fun if we're in huge groups. I managed to get most of the boss-sourced splinters with a large, 12 person group with 2 tanks, 2 healers, and various hangers on making our entire group 16+, and we got most of the bosses down. Including the wandering bosses. And that was fun.

But we weren't able to get the Skittering skirmish fragment, I think it just didn't spawn at the right time, so I went back in today to try to get that splinter. I think it took me around 4 hours. I joined three different 12-player group finders. The first two, we couldn't get the boss down, and the skirmish timed out. Having the fight time out after working on it for a long time is incredibly frustrating.

The third time, there were 2 full 12 player groups, and we did it, but it took a long time.
Having fully 2/3 of the player cap on one skirmish is not great design.We had people going back to the Starlight Plaza to yell to everyone to come help. It kinda worked. The player cap really needs to be raised.

I have yet to see a Faceted boss. And I've been in there for a long time.

Normal vs. Vet for the whole NM:
I think this idea has some merit, but that's going to split up the player base even more. Even now, when the content is new, it's pretty empty. If we split the player base over normal and vet too, there simply won't be enough people to do anything.

It takes too long to gain favor.

Wandering Bosses interacting with the Skirmishes.
- This is a real pain. When I was tanking the skirmish in the Parch, Dunegorger repeatedly swallowed me. To the point that my group was watching the map and let me know when it got remotely close, so I could run away. It sure looked like it was specifically targeting the tanks.
- With Roksa in the Skittering precinct, I was usually the worst tank in the scrum, so I would spend my time unearthing the braziers (since I could survive it, usually) and shooting the spider swarms, and when Roksa would come through, I'd aggro her and lead her further down her path until she killed me, so I could sometimes get her to basically skip the skirmish. But this only worked a couple of times, and usually we had to yell in chat to stop aggroing her, to let her go on her way. It slowed things up a ton.

Post-Relic dungeons:
Are these supposed to have a normal and vet mode? We were doing Gossamer Crypt, and couldn't. Partly because I was tanking and I am a middling tank at best. It was on Vet. So after a few tries, we all left the Night Market and traveled to the base game, and we switched it to Normal. It seemed easier, but all told I spent an hour in there, and we couldn't clear it.

Daily in-precinct quests: they don't spawn at the same points? I laboriously tracked them all down on my thief, and marked them on a map. But I went in on a different character later to find 1-2 quest spawn points I'd missed, and some of the ones I'd marked earlier weren't there! They'd moved. Some were in the same place, but not all.

Night's Den unlocks: The main house is great. But WOW, are the unlocked areas disappointing! One small room each? And ugly rooms at that? Did you deliberately make this house a furniture storage house? It was also unclear that we had to collect the relic from the furnishing box we get in the mail, in order to unlock them.
The treasure room is nice, but we can't move around in it?

I know there's a vault or something in the Night's Den, that I couldn't access the first time I tried. I'll try again tomorrow, now that I have the 3 relics.

Ghost Phase:
This confused me on the first day, but now that I know how to take advantage of it, (running through mobs, aiming the winged section to go over the heads of mobs, etc.) I understand, and it's cool.

Group finder is bugged.

Make Skirmishes more visible.
Make the Doors to the precinct with the Active Skirmish glow? I know we can see it on the map, but paging through the 4 maps on a console is not intuitive at all. I think many players don't know how. And even when we do, the Skirmish Icon is so big, the crossed swords of an active skirmish is really hard to see.

Active Skirmish on Map:
I think there's a bug with the skirmishes, too. I was waiting in the Skittering Precinct, the map showed the skirmish active, but it wasn't. I reloaded ui, I logged out, and every time I came back: map showed active skirmish, no skirmish. I even changed instances a few times, and got back to the bugged one, and it was still bugged.