My (late) Craglorn feedback and review: "what were you thinking?"

Vahrokh · July 2014

Hello,

I am posting this in hope it'll serve as feedback to ZoS.

It's an huge wall of text. I took a long time to write it down, the time it took to find 1 healer for my group.

After having had a lot of fun and engagement in levelling up by questing, I completed all the VR regions by level VR 11. I found the post-VR nerf content to be on the easy side, but hey, can't make everyone happy, can you?

Anyway I and I dare say a massive majority, get to Craglorn after having had a whole soloable experience, with a smidge of optional grouping (if you insist doing the 4 men instances).

I knew that Craglorn would mean: a 180° turn on gameplay and group required to do anything.

I was fine with that. I have always played in raiding guilds etc. etc. so playing in a team feels good.

But here comes my stupor: Craglorn game design is completely, utterly illogical.

1) First of all, the harsh, 180° change I mentioned above: in a game you ZoS slowly transformed into a "soloable experience", there's not a single quest to "prepare" the player to what awaits him.
I played the introduction quest, then got sent to click stuff in 3 places. I see *3* mobs. As "overpowered sorc" and being VR 11 I attacked them without even thinking. "Magically" another 4 mobs appeared. Each 3 times thougher than any mob met before entering Craglorn. I died very unceremoniously.

But it's not 140g repairs that hit me. It was how non-existing is the passage from "you are the super-hero-who-slain-Molag-Bal-and-stuff" to "here, die to some so lowly trash mobs that they don't even leave any loot".

2) Ok, let's get over with this. They say the first impression matters but let's move on. Craglorn is "end game", isn't it?

No, I am wrong. Place is choking full of very low VR people. They ALL and ONLY ask one of: "LFG anomaly run", "LFG 3 bosses run" and "LFG Hircine (exploit!) run".

How much can a zone game design fail more than this? It's terrible, it totally breaks immersion I had for weeks.

3) I find a couple of quests. I start looking for group to do them. Minutes go. 10 minutes go. 1 hour goes. After 1 hour - and this experience repeats every single day - I have found 1-2 members. When lucky, we usually get either the tank or the healer. After another hour that tank or healer gets bored and quits. Always.

4) Ok, after 8 hours of trying, I finally manage to slap a group together. Finally being a team player pays off!

Oh wait. Each of us is stuck at a different quest and at different step of the same quests. AND depending on step, some can't even go inside the required dungeons to help those stuck at a previous step. And - differently than before Craglorn - many quests are actually long quest lines. Miss a step or have someone in the group not "synchronized" and it's all back to zero.
This also applies to guilds, that is there's no "just find an endgame guild" fix to this. Either you join a Craglorn guild that ALSO helps each member at every step or you are out of luck, even in a proper guild. Needless to say that most Craglorn guilds are now only doing trials and won't really redo every quest just because "new dude Joe joined us 3 days ago".

This is possibly the worst implementation, the worst design I have seen in 16 years of playing MMOs.

First you demand teams and then teams with same progress AND if you aren't perfectly synchronized the hours you spent finding people are wasted? Are we crazy?

After days of torturing effort I managed to do *1* quest. ONE. Is this the "elder game" I expected to find, after having had so much fun and excitement levelling up? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

5) What did I get for all that torture and completing 5 hours worth of quest chain? Nothing worth keeping.

6) NOW I undestand why everybody only grinds bosses. It's boring as hell but hey, it's 37k or so a boss and the farmers learned the min max rotation so you do a boss every minute tops. And THEY get fast XP, ZERO repairs. I joined one of those "trains" made of 12 players in 30 seconds of waiting and we rolled over everything. I never died and got 3 epics. In 30 minutes. Compare with the 5 hours with a green or whatever as a prize...

7) Basically I was wrong. I posted the XP leechers were just that: going the path of least resistance to skip content and farm easy XP. Instead it's not just that. It's more involved: it's so tiresome and pointless to find a group for actually "played" levelling up that nobody cares.
It's very sad, because Craglorn is a nice place and the quests look cool. But they are made, designed wrong. They are a 18 wheeler truck with a citycar engine. It just does not work.

How should Craglorn be changed in my opinion

1) Create a "cushion landing zone" where a player fresh of the previous game levelling up scheme, won't suddenly be thrown against a concrete wall. That is, implement one first "quest hub" that starts soloable and ends requiring 2-3 people, possibly not a "classic holy trinity" forced team.

2) Make outdoor "pure grind" phases soloable or doable in a group of 2. This would greatly smooth out the hideous "I am at step 3, you at 5 me at 6".

3) Split the quest chains so none of them locks players into more than 3 different steps.

4) Make the zone less exploitable by XP grinders. Why do they get 3 close bosses with no NPC to kill in between so they can just perma-speed run? Why can they exploit Hircine dumb adds forever?

Same goes for Trials.

There's no graduality into it. People play full time in solo, then one day they are meant to get into a well coordinated group.
There should be at least one "introduction trial" to make people dip their feet in the shallow, beach water instead of slamming them straight into the ocean.

Not only.
Some classes / specs are not even accepted.
Not only, a new guy who enters Craglorn clearly lacks the trials. But here's the catch, in order to accept you in the group, you must link your achievement about having already completed that trial. That's quite a catch, isn't it?

But at least the last issue can be fixed by joining a good PvE guild enough, I hope they would teach the new members how to do trials without all those stops.

The other Craglorn issues? They are only mitigated by being in a good PvE guild, but the design flaws are all there to see.

I know we'll get "soloable new content" soon and I am glad about it.

However Craglorn (and maybe other expansions) has born as group content and many like me love group content... yet it discourages to group! And pushes only to farm.

Thanks and an achievement to the few who have made this far.

Csub · July 2014

Well, you have some points right but I do not agree with everything.

First off, you said you rushed in against mobs only to find out that they summon more and you died. You should have known, and apparently you did, that these were made for groups.
Yes, I was also surprised that the main story had nothing to do with it, it didn't have an epilogue, we still don't know the fate of certain characters etc. I am guessing they will continue it with 2.0 when another main story comes in, a new threat with it etc.

Secondly, anomalies were nerfed and, while yes people still use those, I always thought people should have several ways to level up, if they want to grind, let them. I also did when templar was weaker and VR zones harder and I just kept dying although I never grind otherwise since it is boring for me. Yes, the purple items were a bit too common but if I recall correctly, they nerfed the droprates.

Thirdly, you should ask in guilds for quests, I am in 2 tradeguilds and an endgame guild and I constantly see people grouping up even for quests, I also never had to wait more than ten minutes for a group.

Yes, phasing can make things more tricky but the fix for that is coming soon, let's hope quite soon.

Also, you said that the whole game is solo then you are suddenly expected to work together with 11 other people for trials and that this is not a good design. Well, in pretty much most mmos I played, this is the case. You have group dungeons to at least get a hint, you have veteran/HC dungeons that are closer to trial or raids in pretty much most games. You won't get practice raids unless the game has previous expansions with easier raids.

Also, there is the group Oriented zone, that can also count as some experience.

Also, while this is a nicely constructed feedback, I think you would have a bigger chance of getting these to the proper staff if you used /feedback ingame (staying this because of your prologue).

frankuguzzb16_ESO · July 2014

I found harder to solo the VR6+ quests than finding a group to play dailies in Craglorn, so...NOPE at evrything you said. Probably it's because i'm a templar healer and you were a Sorceror, but srsly, you want the easy mode to last forever??? Even if you have the ''op class'' in Craglorn you have to GROUP, and just for this reason it's awesome.

TeraAngelos · July 2014

If Zeni wants to cut back on Craglorn grinding, they should make it only accessible after completing Cadwell's Gold.

I don't mind the idea of group content. The whole concept of the Adventure Zones sounds pretty fun to me. I have been having the same troubles though finding groups to quest with, so I feel your pain

TeraAngelos · July 2014

frankuguzzb16_ESO wrote: »

I found harder to solo the VR6+ quests than finding a group to play dailies in Craglorn, so...NOPE at evrything you said. Probably it's because i'm a templar healer and you were a Sorceror, but srsly, you want the easy mode to last forever??? Even if you have the ''op class'' in Craglorn you have to GROUP, and just for this reason it's awesome.

I don't think the OP was slamming group content at all. I think he was just pointing out that the way Craglorn is designed, with how specific your group needs to be (needing 4 people all on the exact same step of the quest), it's difficult to manage logistically.

Logan9a · July 2014

Thoughtful review. Personally, I don't think that 'forced grouping' is the answer. Feels too much like a 'bait and switch' to me. You can level all the way up solo then are suddenly forced to group? They did that crap in the Final Fantasy games and it really turned me off. I like being able to solo the game and group when I feel like it. For those that want groups and such, there are hard dungeons - all good.

I concur that I dislike Craglorn and won't be going there. Hopefully, they'll have out new content soon.

PBpsy · July 2014

So from level 1 to VR11 the OP didn't bother with any group content[15 Group Dungeons,15 Public Dungeons,6 Vet dungeons ] and did not try to find a good guild with which he could slowly work up to end game group content. He then went to Craglorn to do group content with pugs and expected that to work smoothly. He then came here to complain about other people playstyle.

Am I right?

dharbert · July 2014

If you've never been to Craglorn, here is a sample of the zone chat that will tell you all you need to know:

Player: LFG Anoms
Player: LFG Burials
Player: Any room in tower?
Player: There's a waiting list
Player: Looking for any grind
Player: LFM tower. Must know the fights and have TS3 and minimum 800 dps.
Player: <insert player name here> is leeching, don't let him into a group.

Dcaliber · July 2014

I do agree with you on most points. I really REALLY wish Craglorn had some sort of prologue or story to go with it. I am a solo player. I will always be a solo player. I hope that the next zones allow challenging solo play.

Anastasia · July 2014

Vahrokh wrote: »

Hello,

I am posting this in hope it'll serve as feedback to ZoS.

It's an huge wall of text. I took a long time to write it down, the time it took to find 1 healer for my group.

After having had a lot of fun and engagement in levelling up by questing, I completed all the VR regions by level VR 11. I found the post-VR nerf content to be on the easy side, but hey, can't make everyone happy, can you?

Anyway I and I dare say a massive majority, get to Craglorn after having had a whole soloable experience, with a smidge of optional grouping (if you insist doing the 4 men instances).

I knew that Craglorn would mean: a 180° turn on gameplay and group required to do anything.

I was fine with that. I have always played in raiding guilds etc. etc. so playing in a team feels good.

But here comes my stupor: Craglorn game design is completely, utterly illogical.

1) First of all, the harsh, 180° change I mentioned above: in a game you ZoS slowly transformed into a "soloable experience", there's not a single quest to "prepare" the player to what awaits him.
I played the introduction quest, then got sent to click stuff in 3 places. I see *3* mobs. As "overpowered sorc" and being VR 11 I attacked them without even thinking. "Magically" another 4 mobs appeared. Each 3 times thougher than any mob met before entering Craglorn. I died very unceremoniously.

But it's not 140g repairs that hit me. It was how non-existing is the passage from "you are the super-hero-who-slain-Molag-Bal-and-stuff" to "here, die to some so lowly trash mobs that they don't even leave any loot".

2) Ok, let's get over with this. They say the first impression matters but let's move on. Craglorn is "end game", isn't it?

No, I am wrong. Place is choking full of very low VR people. They ALL and ONLY ask one of: "LFG anomaly run", "LFG 3 bosses run" and "LFG Hircine (exploit!) run".

How much can a zone game design fail more than this? It's terrible, it totally breaks immersion I had for weeks.

3) I find a couple of quests. I start looking for group to do them. Minutes go. 10 minutes go. 1 hour goes. After 1 hour - and this experience repeats every single day - I have found 1-2 members. When lucky, we usually get either the tank or the healer. After another hour that tank or healer gets bored and quits. Always.

4) Ok, after 8 hours of trying, I finally manage to slap a group together. Finally being a team player pays off!

Oh wait. Each of us is stuck at a different quest and at different step of the same quests. AND depending on step, some can't even go inside the required dungeons to help those stuck at a previous step. And - differently than before Craglorn - many quests are actually long quest lines. Miss a step or have someone in the group not "synchronized" and it's all back to zero.
This also applies to guilds, that is there's no "just find an endgame guild" fix to this. Either you join a Craglorn guild that ALSO helps each member at every step or you are out of luck, even in a proper guild. Needless to say that most Craglorn guilds are now only doing trials and won't really redo every quest just because "new dude Joe joined us 3 days ago".

This is possibly the worst implementation, the worst design I have seen in 16 years of playing MMOs.

First you demand teams and then teams with same progress AND if you aren't perfectly synchronized the hours you spent finding people are wasted? Are we crazy?

After days of torturing effort I managed to do *1* quest. ONE. Is this the "elder game" I expected to find, after having had so much fun and excitement levelling up? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

5) What did I get for all that torture and completing 5 hours worth of quest chain? Nothing worth keeping.

6) NOW I undestand why everybody only grinds bosses. It's boring as hell but hey, it's 37k or so a boss and the farmers learned the min max rotation so you do a boss every minute tops. And THEY get fast XP, ZERO repairs. I joined one of those "trains" made of 12 players in 30 seconds of waiting and we rolled over everything. I never died and got 3 epics. In 30 minutes. Compare with the 5 hours with a green or whatever as a prize...

7) Basically I was wrong. I posted the XP leechers were just that: going the path of least resistance to skip content and farm easy XP. Instead it's not just that. It's more involved: it's so tiresome and pointless to find a group for actually "played" levelling up that nobody cares.
It's very sad, because Craglorn is a nice place and the quests look cool. But they are made, designed wrong. They are a 18 wheeler truck with a citycar engine. It just does not work.

How should Craglorn be changed in my opinion

1) Create a "cushion landing zone" where a player fresh of the previous game levelling up scheme, won't suddenly be thrown against a concrete wall. That is, implement one first "quest hub" that starts soloable and ends requiring 2-3 people, possibly not a "classic holy trinity" forced team.

2) Make outdoor "pure grind" phases soloable or doable in a group of 2. This would greatly smooth out the hideous "I am at step 3, you at 5 me at 6".

3) Split the quest chains so none of them locks players into more than 3 different steps.

4) Make the zone less exploitable by XP grinders. Why do they get 3 close bosses with no NPC to kill in between so they can just perma-speed run? Why can they exploit Hircine dumb adds forever?

Same goes for Trials.

There's no graduality into it. People play full time in solo, then one day they are meant to get into a well coordinated group.
There should be at least one "introduction trial" to make people dip their feet in the shallow, beach water instead of slamming them straight into the ocean.

Not only.
Some classes / specs are not even accepted.
Not only, a new guy who enters Craglorn clearly lacks the trials. But here's the catch, in order to accept you in the group, you must link your achievement about having already completed that trial. That's quite a catch, isn't it?

But at least the last issue can be fixed by joining a good PvE guild enough, I hope they would teach the new members how to do trials without all those stops.

The other Craglorn issues? They are only mitigated by being in a good PvE guild, but the design flaws are all there to see.

I know we'll get "soloable new content" soon and I am glad about it.

However Craglorn (and maybe other expansions) has born as group content and many like me love group content... yet it discourages to group! And pushes only to farm.

Thanks and an achievement to the few who have made this far.

Insightful post Vahrokh, but how about:

"1) Create a "cushion landing zone" where a player fresh of the previous game levelling up scheme, (*** You mean the one where it was demanded to be NERFED for soloability for 10 levels??) won't suddenly be thrown against a concrete wall. (***EXACT WORDING USED BY DEMANDERS FOR SOLO ALL THE TIME THROUGH V+ 1-10 CONTENT: WE HIT A BRICK WALL - TOO DIFFICULT -MOBS IN THREES - TOO DENSE...)

"That is, implement one first "quest hub" that starts soloable and ends requiring 2-3 people, possibly not a "classic holy trinity" forced team."

"2) "First of all, the harsh, 180° change I mentioned above: in a game you ZoS slowly transformed into a "soloable experience", there's not a single quest to "prepare" the player to what awaits him." ( **And here you mean the quests that could have been grouped in V+ 1-10 if grouping e x p were raised for incentive, or loot rewards or any number of other suggestions INSTEAD OF LISTENING TO SOLO-EVERYTHING-THROUGH-ALL-CONTENT-DEMANDERS???????)

Yea. NO. That 'cushion' needs to be done PRIOR to endgame, period.

tengri · July 2014

dharbert wrote: »

Player: LFG Anoms
Player: LFG Burials
Player: Any room in tower?
Player: There's a waiting list
Player: Looking for any grind
Player: LFM tower. Must know the fights and have TS3 and minimum 800 dps.
Player: <insert player name here> is leeching, don't let him into a group.

Craglorn is a big disappointment.
I dont mind grouping at times but I play odd hours when not many ppl are around in the first place; for such a person like me Craglorn is basically non-existent.
Alone or in the rare case I manage to find someone to group with (NOT for grinding/boss farming, never managed to get full group for anything else) we can hardly do anything there at all.

Laura · July 2014

only issue I have with it is people who are done or further along can't help you on some previous quests. That is just stupid.

richardjameshillb16_ESO · July 2014

Vahrokh wrote: »

Hello,

I am posting this in hope it'll serve as feedback to ZoS.

It's an huge wall of text. I took a long time to write it down, the time it took to find 1 healer for my group.

After having had a lot of fun and engagement in levelling up by questing, I completed all the VR regions by level VR 11. I found the post-VR nerf content to be on the easy side, but hey, can't make everyone happy, can you?

Anyway I and I dare say a massive majority, get to Craglorn after having had a whole soloable experience, with a smidge of optional grouping (if you insist doing the 4 men instances).

I knew that Craglorn would mean: a 180° turn on gameplay and group required to do anything.

I was fine with that. I have always played in raiding guilds etc. etc. so playing in a team feels good.

But here comes my stupor: Craglorn game design is completely, utterly illogical.

1) First of all, the harsh, 180° change I mentioned above: in a game you ZoS slowly transformed into a "soloable experience", there's not a single quest to "prepare" the player to what awaits him.
I played the introduction quest, then got sent to click stuff in 3 places. I see *3* mobs. As "overpowered sorc" and being VR 11 I attacked them without even thinking. "Magically" another 4 mobs appeared. Each 3 times thougher than any mob met before entering Craglorn. I died very unceremoniously.

But it's not 140g repairs that hit me. It was how non-existing is the passage from "you are the super-hero-who-slain-Molag-Bal-and-stuff" to "here, die to some so lowly trash mobs that they don't even leave any loot".

2) Ok, let's get over with this. They say the first impression matters but let's move on. Craglorn is "end game", isn't it?

No, I am wrong. Place is choking full of very low VR people. They ALL and ONLY ask one of: "LFG anomaly run", "LFG 3 bosses run" and "LFG Hircine (exploit!) run".

How much can a zone game design fail more than this? It's terrible, it totally breaks immersion I had for weeks.

3) I find a couple of quests. I start looking for group to do them. Minutes go. 10 minutes go. 1 hour goes. After 1 hour - and this experience repeats every single day - I have found 1-2 members. When lucky, we usually get either the tank or the healer. After another hour that tank or healer gets bored and quits. Always.

4) Ok, after 8 hours of trying, I finally manage to slap a group together. Finally being a team player pays off!

Oh wait. Each of us is stuck at a different quest and at different step of the same quests. AND depending on step, some can't even go inside the required dungeons to help those stuck at a previous step. And - differently than before Craglorn - many quests are actually long quest lines. Miss a step or have someone in the group not "synchronized" and it's all back to zero.
This also applies to guilds, that is there's no "just find an endgame guild" fix to this. Either you join a Craglorn guild that ALSO helps each member at every step or you are out of luck, even in a proper guild. Needless to say that most Craglorn guilds are now only doing trials and won't really redo every quest just because "new dude Joe joined us 3 days ago".

This is possibly the worst implementation, the worst design I have seen in 16 years of playing MMOs.

First you demand teams and then teams with same progress AND if you aren't perfectly synchronized the hours you spent finding people are wasted? Are we crazy?

After days of torturing effort I managed to do *1* quest. ONE. Is this the "elder game" I expected to find, after having had so much fun and excitement levelling up? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

5) What did I get for all that torture and completing 5 hours worth of quest chain? Nothing worth keeping.

6) NOW I undestand why everybody only grinds bosses. It's boring as hell but hey, it's 37k or so a boss and the farmers learned the min max rotation so you do a boss every minute tops. And THEY get fast XP, ZERO repairs. I joined one of those "trains" made of 12 players in 30 seconds of waiting and we rolled over everything. I never died and got 3 epics. In 30 minutes. Compare with the 5 hours with a green or whatever as a prize...

7) Basically I was wrong. I posted the XP leechers were just that: going the path of least resistance to skip content and farm easy XP. Instead it's not just that. It's more involved: it's so tiresome and pointless to find a group for actually "played" levelling up that nobody cares.
It's very sad, because Craglorn is a nice place and the quests look cool. But they are made, designed wrong. They are a 18 wheeler truck with a citycar engine. It just does not work.

How should Craglorn be changed in my opinion

1) Create a "cushion landing zone" where a player fresh of the previous game levelling up scheme, won't suddenly be thrown against a concrete wall. That is, implement one first "quest hub" that starts soloable and ends requiring 2-3 people, possibly not a "classic holy trinity" forced team.

2) Make outdoor "pure grind" phases soloable or doable in a group of 2. This would greatly smooth out the hideous "I am at step 3, you at 5 me at 6".

3) Split the quest chains so none of them locks players into more than 3 different steps.

4) Make the zone less exploitable by XP grinders. Why do they get 3 close bosses with no NPC to kill in between so they can just perma-speed run? Why can they exploit Hircine dumb adds forever?

Same goes for Trials.

There's no graduality into it. People play full time in solo, then one day they are meant to get into a well coordinated group.
There should be at least one "introduction trial" to make people dip their feet in the shallow, beach water instead of slamming them straight into the ocean.

Not only.
Some classes / specs are not even accepted.
Not only, a new guy who enters Craglorn clearly lacks the trials. But here's the catch, in order to accept you in the group, you must link your achievement about having already completed that trial. That's quite a catch, isn't it?

But at least the last issue can be fixed by joining a good PvE guild enough, I hope they would teach the new members how to do trials without all those stops.

The other Craglorn issues? They are only mitigated by being in a good PvE guild, but the design flaws are all there to see.

I know we'll get "soloable new content" soon and I am glad about it.

However Craglorn (and maybe other expansions) has born as group content and many like me love group content... yet it discourages to group! And pushes only to farm.

Thanks and an achievement to the few who have made this far.

Thanks for posting this, I was thinking of posting something along the same lines,

I love ESO, the graphics, story, crafting are fine, I actually enjoyed the VR zones too (bit to easy after they reduced the difficulty)

But Craglorn is just frustrating unless you have a group of 4 friends to play with at the same time, each time, and all at the same stage of the quest.

There are so few people who want to quest At peak time this Saturday and Sunday I completed nothing, got one group for Rahni-za,, but someone left for dinner and that was it.

I am not sure if the population playing the game is low, or if there are just not enough people at VR12 (all the lower VR just XP grind). Its also getting very hard to get a group for the VR dungeons.

I am certainly considering not renewing my Subscription, I am not really an altaholic, and whilst I enjoyed the one Trial I have done, I do not think that will keep my interest.

Why they are wasting resources on another Craglorn style zone, when the majority of players can't complete the quests in this one is beyond me.

At least make the quests Solo-able, so we can complete the bloody things, Leave the public dungeons and trials as they are.

TehMagnus · July 2014

As someone that just rushed to VR12, only reason you might have to do dungeons in Craglorn is for Skyshards and when you're VR12, it's easy to find a grp and rush all the dungeons in ~2h.

Daily quests are useless (bad loot).

As for players like you who do this for the content, I have the one solution:

"ZOS needs to Fix grouping".

There are many things to do in Craglorn, daily quests, trials, dungeons. Yet, try to use the grouping tool and you'll find a grp for? Craglorn. GG WP: useless tool.

You should be able to look for:
"Any Daily Quest"
"X Daily Quest"
"Any Public dungeon"
"Any Trial"
"AA / Hel RA"
"Crypt".

Force people to group but at least give them the means to do so...

TheAmu · July 2014

It's the grouping tool that needs to be fixed, I agree. I thought I could use it to just find a group to do the dungeon I was inside of. But the group I ended up with was one that wanted to do an undaunted dungeons miles away.

I apologized and left. And that undoubtedly annoyed them. I use the term 'annoyed' because a stronger word would be censored.

It should also be an option to allow someone to group with you no matter what instance you are in.

You should also have the option to group with someone on "solo" bosses if you have someone willing to help you. It's an MMO. Massively multiplayer. Multiplayer. But the game doesn't let you.

In FF:ARR you could group with anyone, and if you were too high a level you were just scaled down to the appropriate max level for that quest/dungeon/boss.

Something like that would be nice to see here.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO · July 2014

TheAmu wrote: »

In FF:ARR you could group with anyone, and if you were too high a level you were just scaled down to the appropriate max level for that quest/dungeon/boss.

Downscaling is a PITA, you lose all the skills above that level and end up having to remember how to play without the skills you use all the time at the level you're currently at.

My WHM had to have 4 skillbar sets for the various level tiers at which I lost some important skill, like Stoneskin, Shroud of Saints, etc.

I hated doing daily roulettes due to that, I'm a level 50 with a fully expanded relic using a level 15's two skills: so much fun!

Evandus · July 2014

I actually agree with what the OP is saying. Although I do draw a line at the grinding portion. I used to be against it. Then I realized too late that being stuck helping the other alliances was not to my liking. Had I realized it then, my main would be V12, alts V12 too. As opposed to being unhappy and unmotivated helping out the Queen at V2, with alts at V1, and level 46 (dreading hitting V1).

Even though I am not grinding xp in Craglorn now, I don't think negatively of those who are. Given the difficulty of finding a group to do any of the actual quest content there it's no shock.

And maybe I'm a little off on this, but I did go out there on my V1 when doing some comparisons and the trash mobs were not significantly more dangerous in Craglorn when compared to V1 mobs. They are just worth a lot more xp, loot, and come in higher numbers right off the bat.

They really need to take another hard look at their grouping tool. It's not adequate for use amongst the playerbase. Some minor examples from recent experiences:

1. My main didn't realize there was a dungeon in Coldharbour. Since he hit V1 gaining discovery for the Hollow City, he couldn't que up to tank it anyway. Took an entire weekend to get a pug group that could complete it.
2. My main got Banished Cells Veteran accomplished after 6 hours of group tool antics. Actually got the group from someone asking for a tank in zone chat. He has yet to actually get a full group to do Fungal Grotto and Spindleclutch.
3. When I've been out in Craglorn goofing off mob testing; the zone is dominated by people begging for farming groups or warnings about players that didn't fit into someone's farming group.
4. Craglorn, via grouping tool, really lacks options.

People don't use the grouping tool often because it's a terrible way to get a group going. Unless of course you are farming something and have a lot of time to kill. Even in the 35-50 ranges I had terrible luck getting a full group. Just a carousel of people coming in and out (most tired of waiting to fill), with nary a tank or heaing type present. Mostly dps of one type or another looking for the other two...

Thralgaf · July 2014

Ok, let me make sure I understand. ZOS is redesigning the v1-10 experience so that it is easier to solo because the majority of players demanded it, and we are now upset that said experience does not prepare us for Craglorn group content? Mmmkay.

Sangeet · July 2014

You crushed my hope. I had now leveled 15 days to Vet 11, started to complete the RIFT as last solo zone, and now you announce that the group quests are failing due to synch issues ?

Vahrokh · July 2014

PBpsy wrote: »

So from level 1 to VR11 the OP didn't bother with any group content[15 Group Dungeons,15 Public Dungeons,6 Vet dungeons ] and did not try to find a good guild with which he could slowly work up to end game group content. He then went to Craglorn to do group content with pugs and expected that to work smoothly. He then came here to complain about other people playstyle.

Am I right?

No, you aren't. If you want I can post screenshots of my maps showing "white" on group content.
I also joined both PvE and PvP guilds... they "just" happened to decline and now they are dead. I have just been accepted in a large PvE and PvP guild (Emperor and stuff).

This does not change the fact that Craglorn flaws affect even those in a guild.
Maybe the message was not clear enough, but Craglorn by design imposes grouping... but then makes grouping unnecessarily hard because of the shortcomings I have listed.
A MMO company should never make their players feel they have to endure pain because of out-of-game technicalities (like syncing the quest steps for every member).

Vahrokh · July 2014

Thralgaf wrote: »

Ok, let me make sure I understand. ZOS is redesigning the v1-10 experience so that it is easier to solo because the majority of players demanded it, and we are now upset that said experience does not prepare us for Craglorn group content? Mmmkay.

Well, feel free to search this forum for my violent posts against the VR nerf. Can't help ZoS went straight ahead anyway.

Vahrokh · July 2014

Sangeet wrote: »

You crushed my hope. I had now leveled 15 days to Vet 11, started to complete the RIFT as last solo zone, and now you announce that the group quests are failing due to synch issues ?

I am afraid, but I think it's really the case.
Being Dark Elf my last zone was Dominion. I really loved the last zone, I felt actually so bad...

when I had to pick which of the two khajiit sisters would become the new Mane. And I felt TERRIBLE when I learned the "non chosen" would actually have to endure that mortal torture, buried alive.

I mean, the game plot really managed to make me feel strong emotions like few other MMOs...

... and then the total, utter anticlimactic experience just 2 minutes past these emotions.

"You grand hero, the Hallowed One blah blah... here you go. Now you are garbage, stranded and reading a constant:

LFG <Several kinds of cheap Korean MMO style grinding>

the whole day.

Not only that. Know, oh Hallowed One, that those guys SHALL immediately find the tanks and healers you won't get and SHALL level to VR12 in no time. While you shall be still begging for the same tank and healer who flood the grind groups.