solution for "hardcore" vs "casual" gaming?

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO · October 2014

I have been considering a lot lately, how the trials system could be bettered and advanced - mostly because I'm not hugely into PVP, but I love the PVE aspect of ESO immensely, and am fed up with the traditional classing of "hardcore" and "not hardcore" gamers.

ESO is not your average MMO by any means. There are many players who are veteran rank in ESO that have never played MMO's before.

Whilst I understand that there has to be an incline in the difficulty of the encounters you face whilst progressing higher into veteran ranks, I think that Sanctum Ophidia is a very steep learning curve! I see that it is possible, but it seems that it is only possible to a very elite few - and similarly with Veteran mode Dragonstar Arena.

Again, I completely understand that we asked for more challenging trials, and dungeons - but it just seems too much..

To my original point, I feel that the truly hardcore of ESO, in my opinion, are the ones who are very active, and want to participate in progressive content. A not hardcore player is perhaps more casual in their gaming and not so bothered about getting hard mode achievements. This divide is pretty large in favour of the progressive player, when you consider your end game content audience, lets call it 80 - 20, being generous.

The "hardcore" end game content therefore, needs to be difficult, but still accessible, or at least possible, for that 80%, whereas Sanctum Ophidia is currently only available to a very small percentage.

My proposal, would be to have generally longer trials with many more bosses - which would take time to learn initially, but none are physically impossible, just each unique. Each of these bosses (or the entire trial) should have a hard mode which involves new mechanics, a more challenging encounter, and appropriate rewards. That leads on to my second proposal which is itemisation.The current gear chase does not feel overly rewarding, and does not feel like it is for the purpose of being able to progress further (in terms of minimal stat increases and minuscule changes in overall DPS). If raids were longer and dropped more and more varied loot, that had stat increases which felt significant, and made the hard modes more achieveable, then the aforementioned 80% would all feel catered for, as would the remaining 20%. The current small percentage of "hardcore" gamers would also be happy with being the first to clear the new hard modes

I don't think it is just me that feels this way, I'm sure there are many active players who wish to participate and dedicate time to new trials and large group content, but are being left out due to the overly hardcore nature of the new end game content, and more experienced MMO players and raid leaders not wanting to take the "noobs" along, regardless of their dedication to the game or the guild. This however, is only to be expected in trials where a single mistake from a single player can mean 12 deaths (or sometimes even due to a random mechanic - black holes any one?)

Any other constructive ideas on this topic can surely only help the devs, so chip in!

Thanks,

Mike.

rashkosh127ub17_ESO · October 2014

You suggest that you want bosses that take time to learn but are not physically impossible. How is that any different from Sanctum or Vet DSA? Sorry but this is just another plea to nerf content that provides a decent challenge.

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO · October 2014

rashkosh127ub17_ESO wrote: »

You suggest that you want bosses that take time to learn but are not physically impossible. How is that any different from Sanctum or Vet DSA? Sorry but this is just another plea to nerf content that provides a decent challenge.

If you read all of what I said, yes the encounters are not physically impossible in sanctum, but without the most elite group you stand little chance. Don't get me wrong, I have sanctum raid for 4 hours this evening, but even one mistake will cause the group to wipe.

What I am asking for is not "easier" content, but "longer progressive" content. Content that is viable without needing to be in a raid group for 12 hours straight, just to get the first boss down!

Currently the end game population consists of a small number of elite people, 1% maybe, that has killed first boss even of sanctum, then a small number of people that do want to attempt sanctum, and do, but can't progress, and the remainder who refuse to even try sanctum as they don't want to waste the gold knowing they will wipe continuously (Idc about these people as that's not a progressive mind set).

With regards to your comments on vet dragonstar, it is difficult, but broken, as admitted by devs in the guild summit. Rounds 7 & 9 depend entirely on how lucky you get basically, and round 9 is what makes arena hard! The rest are challenging enough, but DSA still doesn't drop sets that help with sanctum (except footman for tanks)

I'd like to point out again that I am in no way saying things are terrible, just looking for constructive ideas on how to improve trials/large group PVE in a way that promotes guild progress and being social. But that also works for the entire population!

rashkosh127ub17_ESO · October 2014

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO wrote: »

rashkosh127ub17_ESO wrote: »

You suggest that you want bosses that take time to learn but are not physically impossible. How is that any different from Sanctum or Vet DSA? Sorry but this is just another plea to nerf content that provides a decent challenge.

If you read all of what I said, yes the encounters are not physically impossible in sanctum, but without the most elite group you stand little chance. Don't get me wrong, I have sanctum raid for 4 hours this evening, but even one mistake will cause the group to wipe.

What I am asking for is not "easier" content, but "longer progressive" content. Content that is viable without needing to be in a raid group for 12 hours straight, just to get the first boss down!

What you're saying makes no sense. You want longer, progressive content. Great, me too. However, you basically want the first boss to be able to die with fewer than 12 hours of work put into learning the fight. How does this make any sense exactly?

rashkosh127ub17_ESO · October 2014

and as far as stage 9 on vet dsa goes, we complete it consistently 99% of the time. The 1% of the time that we don't get it has nothing to do with RNG and everything to do with player error. I suggest you revise your strategy. I have heard that they plan on changing how the stage works to make it easier. I'm rather impartial on it either way. But by no means is it currently impossible to have on lockdown.

TehMagnus · October 2014

Veteran Mode Dragonstar arena is made for hardcore players, for the rest there is Normal Mode (which to hardcore players is easy peasy but for many casuals is still extremely difficult).

As for everything, casual or no casual, all you need is training and asking/looking for the correct builds to use. I once tanked Arena with 3 pugs who where in need of a tank. I directly saw they where using stamina builds and had no teamspeak, still, I decided to give it a try since I truly believe Arena can be completed with stamina build DPS and I didn't mind taking some newbies for a run.

Not only did the normal mode fight took 4x longer, they also kept dying and really had no clue about how to fight in a group (at one point healer and 1 DPS died, the last guy was trying to DPS the boss with 90% hp instead of resurrecting the dead people). Moreover their "DPS" was virtually inexistent, I wondered at some point if I wasn't doing more damage with talons and unstable flame as a tank than they where as DPS (one of them just kept spaming some kind of AOE ability with lite knives flying from all around his character? and of course none of them even had a destro staff with elemental ring). After a couple of wipes on poison stage I just decided to end the suffering and quit.

You can only lower the difficulty that much... some people will just never be able to clear anything remotely hard if they don't try to improve how they play and don't wonder at some point why they are failing...

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO · October 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Veteran Mode Dragonstar arena is made for hardcore players, for the rest there is Normal Mode (which to hardcore players is easy peasy but for many casuals is still extremely difficult).

As for everything, casual or no casual, all you need is training and asking/looking for the correct builds to use. I once tanked Arena with 3 pugs who where in need of a tank. I directly saw they where using stamina builds and had no teamspeak, still, I decided to give it a try since I truly believe Arena can be completed with stamina build DPS and I didn't mind taking some newbies for a run.

Not only did the normal mode fight took 4x longer, they also kept dying and really had no clue about how to fight in a group (at one point healer and 1 DPS died, the last guy was trying to DPS the boss with 90% hp instead of resurrecting the dead people). Moreover their "DPS" was virtually inexistent, I wondered at some point if I wasn't doing more damage with talons and unstable flame as a tank than they where as DPS (one of them just kept spaming some kind of AOE ability with lite knives flying from all around his character? and of course none of them even had a destro staff with elemental ring). After a couple of wipes on poison stage I just decided to end the suffering and quit.

You can only lower the difficulty that much... some people will just never be able to clear anything remotely hard if they don't try to improve how they play and don't wonder at some point why they are failing...

is this Teh Magnus?

I do agree entirely, and I do agree with what Rashkosh says also, and understand why he see's my message as pleading for a nerf, but it isn't what I intended!

DSA Vet and SO are perfectly able to be completed - and as you say it just needs a competently skilled team who play as a team and not as 4 or 12 individuals. That and a lot of practice!!

When I said 12 hours straight, i meant literally, in one day, as opposed to 12 hours in total, of course new content should take many hours to learn, and I may have been a bit rash in my statement of the difficulty of both, however they are both VERY challenging.

Last night my group made it to Arena 10 of veteran DSA, so we are hoping to be on the leader board in the next couple of days! (PS If it is Teh Magnus, I enjoy watching your stream and am excited to see you get that third boss down!!)

My original message was supposed to be aimed at creating a constructive dialogue on how Trails could be improved in the future, and I still stand by the opinion that the learning curve for AA/HR to SO is steep! Admittedly the learning curve for DSA normal to DSA veteran feels way more natural - at least for me

I also stand by the opinion that itemization needs to be looked at, but again from the guild summit it appears that this is all in hand, with more staff being taken on in the game play and itemization teams, and a good deal of info on new sets and changes to current items.

Something I would like to see, is BOP and BOE items being re-looked at. I completely agree that the change to BOP was the right thing to do, as AA was being farmed for items to sell. SO is made to be "not farmable" so it could be possible to change the trials sets to BOE. Either this, or only the items you receive in the weekly undaunted coffers (V14 gold items) are BOE. Admittedly this would lead to some of these items being sold - but only by those players who had endeavored to clear the content. The main benefit of the BOE trial set items, is that you could trade the pieces with your raid members or guild members which would promote good teamwork even more, and enable guild progression.

again, I didn't intend for my initial post to sound like an argument, and its not an argument from ignorance, as I am actively participating in the new content regularly, I just want to open discussion from people playing through the content on how we can make it better for everyone

TehMagnus · October 2014

Heya! Yes it is me (feel so popular now

).

I do admit that SO brings much more challenge to the table than AA and Hel Ra. Then again, after doing naked runs of AA I kind of like the fact there actually is a real challenge to a trial, and you have to remember it's most likely the last trial we will have in Craglorn as well as the last trial we'll have for a while (next patches bring some changes that will make people rerun Veteran dungeons as well as VR City of Ash, then Imperial City).

I suppose ZOS wants to keep SO accessible but still hard so that guilds keep trying it but can't clear it during the first day of patch like we did with Hel RA & AA Hard Modes.

Itemization: totally agree. Thing that annoyed me the most last night is getting a useless Aether VR14 bound legendary ring for having first spot in weekly leaderboard when guys doing PVP get 5+ legendary items from which the armors are BOE and not BOP. >_< why so much hate towards PVE? It's not like I spend 10-20K a day worth of potions when doing sanctum or VR Arena... I've been reduced to farming nincruxes (I HATE ChingChong Farming) just to make cash & sustain my raiding..

Gl with Arena ^^. Planning as well to clear da VR Arena this weekend as a tank if I can focus enough not to loose too many lives at stage's 9 boss like last time :disagree: (was my 3rd time tanking though ^^). As for SO, we also got the 3rd boss down 2 days ago, just need to kill The Serpent now ^_^

TehMagnus · October 2014

quote instead of edit. Genious.

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO · October 2014

haha awesome, congrats on third boss, and hope to see a team finally on the leaderboard for SO EU soon then!

and good luck with your run's this weekend also!

And yes I agree, we probably wont see a new trial implemented in the upcoming content, so SO is intended to last guilds for a while I think, with the new veteran dungeon, undaunted quest lines and Imperial City PVE probably bolstering the gear needed to succeed more easily inside of SO.

I would also like to see some sort of longer trials possibly with a weekly lockout system, and timers and soul reservoir removed! I think this may come in the future anyway, but probably a while off yet.

RavishedPsyche · October 2014

I agree that the content should be available to the masses, and currently we are having a heated debate concerning the video posted by my guild, Deviance. We posted out Serpent Kill, in order to give those who haven't seen it a bit of insight. Not to mention give those who might never see it the ability to see how fun it really is and want to get there instead of giving up.

While I don't want them to nerf the content, and I BEG that they don't, I believe that SO will be possible for less hardcore groups if videos are posted and later on tutorials. Deviance will be streaming and posting such videos in the future. We do ask to please consider reigning in your complaints about the difficulty of the trial until you give the groups close to finishing it a chance to finish and bring to others what they know. While some want to keep it to the top tier, we at Deviance believe people can both be competitive and generous with content.

Cheers and happy gaming.

Audigy · October 2014

I don't think you can put everyone into either "noob" or "hardcore".

MMOs are not mentally or physically challenging, its a loophole that many use to explain their failure but the truth is everyone can kill everything if he or she really wants to.

The real issue has always been the time and if you now make dungeons or raids requiring even more time than they already do, then you don't help anyone with that.

People who are for instance playing casually will be having a very hard time to actually do something useful in the game as it just takes too long. Too long to find a group and too long to actually raid the place.

This is something WOW suffers under since years. A raid does require 3-4 hours on HC while the encounters are not that hard. Most people who stay away from HC explain this by the lack of time and not the difficulty.

Besides that you have the issue of accessibility as most raid groups are lead by some uber guru who wants to have it as easy as possible so that new players or those with weaker gear are rejected.

These people you don't help if you make dungeons, quests or entire zones (old VR 1-10) easier as WOW has proven.

I don't play that much but I am always up for a tough encounter as this is what makes my online time enjoyable. That said, even the old VR zones were perfectly fine, so were the guild quests pre nerf.

Draconerus · October 2014

I feel the new content is balanced to the level of difficulty it should be. During the guild summit the devs did mention having less difficult trials with no res limits and other things to help the casual player.

Guppet · October 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Veteran Mode Dragonstar arena is made for hardcore players, for the rest there is Normal Mode (which to hardcore players is easy peasy but for many casuals is still extremely difficult).

As for everything, casual or no casual, all you need is training and asking/looking for the correct builds to use. I once tanked Arena with 3 pugs who where in need of a tank. I directly saw they where using stamina builds and had no teamspeak, still, I decided to give it a try since I truly believe Arena can be completed with stamina build DPS and I didn't mind taking some newbies for a run.

Not only did the normal mode fight took 4x longer, they also kept dying and really had no clue about how to fight in a group (at one point healer and 1 DPS died, the last guy was trying to DPS the boss with 90% hp instead of resurrecting the dead people). Moreover their "DPS" was virtually inexistent, I wondered at some point if I wasn't doing more damage with talons and unstable flame as a tank than they where as DPS (one of them just kept spaming some kind of AOE ability with lite knives flying from all around his character? and of course none of them even had a destro staff with elemental ring). After a couple of wipes on poison stage I just decided to end the suffering and quit.

You can only lower the difficulty that much... some people will just never be able to clear anything remotely hard if they don't try to improve how they play and don't wonder at some point why they are failing...

I would tend to agree with all of this. Since in ESO anyone can craft end game gear, that makes gear not the reason to run content. You should do the content that you are confortable with.

All content needs normal and hard modes (hard for players wanting an extreme challenge). No one should complain about the difficulty of hard modes, provided they have been cleared by others, you accept that difficulty when you enter.

That said, they need to add normal mode to more things, from VR1-14 there are only hard mode dungeons, they need to create normal mode VR dungeons. Perhaps the level scaling and champ system will effectively do this (since in theory a VR 6 entering a normal dungeon should get it scaled to level 50).

Every piece of new pve content needs to come in normal and hard, with hard saying on entry that it is intended fir those that seek additional challenge over normal mode.

Guppet · October 2014

Audigy wrote: »

I don't think you can put everyone into either "noob" or "hardcore".

MMOs are not mentally or physically challenging, its a loophole that many use to explain their failure but the truth is everyone can kill everything if he or she really wants to.

The real issue has always been the time and if you now make dungeons or raids requiring even more time than they already do, then you don't help anyone with that.

That's not true in the slightest, your essentially saying everyone has the same IQ, the same comprehension of mechanics and the same ability to learn.

MMO's are about understanding in game mechanics, if you can do that, it's easy, if you can't its hard.

Not everyone understands everything that same. People have differing IQ's, that's why there is a scale.

TehMagnus · October 2014

Guppet wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Veteran Mode Dragonstar arena is made for hardcore players, for the rest there is Normal Mode (which to hardcore players is easy peasy but for many casuals is still extremely difficult).

As for everything, casual or no casual, all you need is training and asking/looking for the correct builds to use. I once tanked Arena with 3 pugs who where in need of a tank. I directly saw they where using stamina builds and had no teamspeak, still, I decided to give it a try since I truly believe Arena can be completed with stamina build DPS and I didn't mind taking some newbies for a run.

Not only did the normal mode fight took 4x longer, they also kept dying and really had no clue about how to fight in a group (at one point healer and 1 DPS died, the last guy was trying to DPS the boss with 90% hp instead of resurrecting the dead people). Moreover their "DPS" was virtually inexistent, I wondered at some point if I wasn't doing more damage with talons and unstable flame as a tank than they where as DPS (one of them just kept spaming some kind of AOE ability with lite knives flying from all around his character? and of course none of them even had a destro staff with elemental ring). After a couple of wipes on poison stage I just decided to end the suffering and quit.

You can only lower the difficulty that much... some people will just never be able to clear anything remotely hard if they don't try to improve how they play and don't wonder at some point why they are failing...

I would tend to agree with all of this. Since in ESO anyone can craft end game gear, that makes gear not the reason to run content. You should do the content that you are confortable with.

All content needs normal and hard modes (hard for players wanting an extreme challenge). No one should complain about the difficulty of hard modes, provided they have been cleared by others, you accept that difficulty when you enter.

That said, they need to add normal mode to more things, from VR1-14 there are only hard mode dungeons, they need to create normal mode VR dungeons. Perhaps the level scaling and champ system will effectively do this (since in theory a VR 6 entering a normal dungeon should get it scaled to level 50).

Every piece of new pve content needs to come in normal and hard, with hard saying on entry that it is intended fir those that seek additional challenge over normal mode.

Honestly, besides crypt of hearts, none of the VR dungeons are hard

(except maybe grotto? Think that's the one where you get chained and a sword starts falling on you until one of the guys chaining you is dead?) and even COH is a walk in the park for some players...

DDuke · October 2014

Guppet wrote: »

Audigy wrote: »

I don't think you can put everyone into either "noob" or "hardcore".

MMOs are not mentally or physically challenging, its a loophole that many use to explain their failure but the truth is everyone can kill everything if he or she really wants to.

The real issue has always been the time and if you now make dungeons or raids requiring even more time than they already do, then you don't help anyone with that.

That's not true in the slightest, your essentially saying everyone has the same IQ, the same comprehension of mechanics and the same ability to learn.

MMO's are about understanding in game mechanics, if you can do that, it's easy, if you can't its hard.

Not everyone understands everything that same. People have differing IQ's, that's why there is a scale.

I'd also like to state that catering mostly to the people with lower IQ is called "dumbing down", and it's something that has been detrimental to video game quality in general during the 21st century.

The most healthy way to go about things is having a part of the content act as a "tutorial" for the "less smart" people (e.g. easier dungeons/raids), as it is a known fact that practising things makes you better at them (some learn fast & for others it takes some time), while having more difficult content for the "smarter" people (sorry, trying to be really delicate here

), with risk vs. reward adjusted accordingly (in all aspects of the game, not just PvE).

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO · October 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Veteran Mode Dragonstar arena is made for hardcore players, for the rest there is Normal Mode (which to hardcore players is easy peasy but for many casuals is still extremely difficult).

As for everything, casual or no casual, all you need is training and asking/looking for the correct builds to use. I once tanked Arena with 3 pugs who where in need of a tank. I directly saw they where using stamina builds and had no teamspeak, still, I decided to give it a try since I truly believe Arena can be completed with stamina build DPS and I didn't mind taking some newbies for a run.

Not only did the normal mode fight took 4x longer, they also kept dying and really had no clue about how to fight in a group (at one point healer and 1 DPS died, the last guy was trying to DPS the boss with 90% hp instead of resurrecting the dead people). Moreover their "DPS" was virtually inexistent, I wondered at some point if I wasn't doing more damage with talons and unstable flame as a tank than they where as DPS (one of them just kept spaming some kind of AOE ability with lite knives flying from all around his character? and of course none of them even had a destro staff with elemental ring). After a couple of wipes on poison stage I just decided to end the suffering and quit.

You can only lower the difficulty that much... some people will just never be able to clear anything remotely hard if they don't try to improve how they play and don't wonder at some point why they are failing...

I would tend to agree with all of this. Since in ESO anyone can craft end game gear, that makes gear not the reason to run content. You should do the content that you are confortable with.

All content needs normal and hard modes (hard for players wanting an extreme challenge). No one should complain about the difficulty of hard modes, provided they have been cleared by others, you accept that difficulty when you enter.

That said, they need to add normal mode to more things, from VR1-14 there are only hard mode dungeons, they need to create normal mode VR dungeons. Perhaps the level scaling and champ system will effectively do this (since in theory a VR 6 entering a normal dungeon should get it scaled to level 50).

Every piece of new pve content needs to come in normal and hard, with hard saying on entry that it is intended fir those that seek additional challenge over normal mode.

Honestly, besides crypt of hearts, none of the VR dungeons are hard (except maybe grotto? Think that's the one where you get chained and a sword starts falling on you until one of the guys chaining you is dead?) and even COH is a walk in the park for some players...

This is true - and you can even re-attribute more into magicka/stamina for Vet dungeons as they mobs don't hit half as hard.

I have also just applied for Hodor today Magnus - hopefully be grouping with you soon o/

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 · November 2014

Honestly I'd just like to see A LOT less DPS race content and for Zeni to stop equating speed with success / being the best in Trials. Speed runs are a blast in any MMO but basing loot and the leaderboard placing on speed / time pretty much undermines the very nature of this game. Players don't always want to be relegated to magicka based builds and I know Zeni is working hard on balance, as all new MMOs seem to have major balance issues early on. Personally this doesn't have anything to do with me not being able to do Trials with speed - I can easily swap out to 7 Light Armor and Swap to Destruction Staff and hit the "optimal" DPS numbers necessary for a DPS DK in Trials. I'd just like to see the formula for success in Trials to be less about a DPS race and speed and more about beating that Trial. This I think would help bring more players into the fold. But please don't "dumb down" the content because personally I think that sends any MMO down a path of no return where many players then become alienated because the challenge of running end game is gone. Trust me have seen it time and time again in other MMOs and now those MMOs seem more interested in delivering new seasonal festival content, new mounts, new classes but have no new end game group content because they lost all their "hardcore" subs.