I think a ton of this would be alleviated by CONTENT! If players had content to do they would happily do it, and CP, xp, levels, etc would be the usual icing on the cake to enjoying content. As someone who played since launch I can remember how excited I was when ZOS promised us monthly updates in exchange for our $15/month. That slipped to 6-8 weeks, eventually devolving into never, at least in terms of solo quest players. I don't think PVP got much either, although I'm not a PVP guy. Group players got Craglorn, but the whole lack of quest sharing borked it and forced players to boss zerg.

I played all day today, a rare treat in my busy schedule. I was enlightened in the morning and overall I got about 6cp. Not terrible, but seeing the intangible benefits one point gives I'd wish for more but it's not a deal breaker for me. I think it's just that players are bored senseless. It's such an awesome game, but no MMO can survive without content. CP seems like a way to force us to play, to force that dopamine rush when something dings to try and replace the lack of content in the game. So now we have what 3600 dings?

I have no idea what the numbers of subs are, but they can't be great. I'm assuming ZOS has some kind of plan when the monetize the game after going F2P, and maybe they are banking on having an entirely different clientele.

What I think may be helpful that would minimize the gap between casual and more hardcore players is make it so that when you get your enlightened champion point you basically get 1 point for warrior,thief, and mage.

Then make the experience you receive while not enlightened significantly reduced and each champion point you earn while not enlightened is the same as it is now so for example you would earn one for warrior instead of for all 3. This way casual players can potentially earn 3 points per day while more hardcore players can earn a few more but the disparity between points would be reduced.

I would like more options to gain champion points that involve playing the game in a normal, enjoyable fashion.

For example, I would like to see champion points tied to daily activities. Grant a champion point for the pledges. Grant a champion point when you have completed all the kill 20 of X quests in Cyrodiil. Perhaps a CP or two for clearing Dragonstar Arena once per day. That kind of thing. Or at least make daily quests and activities more rewarding.

The XP reward for the pledges is nothing to write home about, nor did the daily hubs in Cyrodiil make me feel warm inside. I really love this game, but I cannot help but laugh at the amount of XP you get for certain activities and wonder how we were intended to gain CP if not through funky exploits.

I have a second suggestion on the matter

Everyone can earn 4 cp per day maximum, after that you get no more cp.

There is a maximum cap of CP one can have every day, this is to make sure that those who abused the previous system and got 100ths of points can't progress till they are on par with the rest.

The 4 points that can be gained should be relatively easy to gain without enlightment, for casual players there is enlightment to keep up.

Also, the dailies in cyrodiil, talking about the quest hubs, cheydinhal, bruma etc. Those quests give 4990 xp, sure some of them are quick to complete, and some are not, but they give too little xp.

If I grind monsters in v10 zone, I can get around 4000xp in 30 seconds, if I find a good group of monsters. A quest in a high risk pvp zone should give alot more then 4990 in my opinon, considering some of them take 10-20 minutes to complete.

This is just my opinion, but I would love increased xp for dungeon and delve completion. And by that, I dont mean first time completion. It could even be on like a daily timer or something to encourage people to diversify there runs.

Also, giving anomalies more xp would be good.

I think giving xp for non-combat activities would be pretty nice too. Such as increased xp for crafting writs and more xp for things like ledgerman or even xp for catching rare fish.

I also think that it should only take maybe a 3/4th of a zone at most to hit a vet level. So upping quest xp all around would be swell. With how the game works now, completing all vet zones should hit a character between v12-14 based on there other activities. Right now now, I think you would be lucky getting a v10 after completion.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We've been reading your posts and understand that many of you are frustrated over recent developments in the game including how you gain Champion Points, how often you're able to gain a Point, how you can gain XP (and therefore, get Champion Points!), among a number of other things. We'd like you to tell us what you'd like to see instead, or how you'd like to do something differently than what's currently offered.

We can tell you that we are planning to adjust XP that you receive from dungeons and Trials so they offer a more viable way to level and/or receive Champion Points. We also are continuing to hammer on the Enlightenment issues that many of you are experiencing - we want to make sure it works so you can get the Points you deserve. Tell us what's been frustrating you, and we'll do our best to address it. Just remember to stay constructive and respectful - you're allowed to not like something, but tell us why and what we can do to make it better.

Thanks!

I am a PvE player at heart, so I will adress my issues and ignore others (like PvP).

I would love to see increased XP gained for doing dungeons, both normal scaled to level and VR Dungeons. While under Enlightenment I did VR Crypt of Hearts and gained about 90K xp. Since this dungeon takes about 25-30 mins (depending on skill), I feel a total of 200K while Enlightened is a appropriate amount to keep in line with the 1CP/h while Enlightened. Perhaps a bit less for the easier dungeons that are faster. Perhaps a bit more for VR CoA.

To avoid exploiting, you could put the majority of XP on the last boss.

Bonus XP for completing Hard Modes or speedruns should be a thing (not just for the achievement, but every time you complete them).

Trials should also award ALOT more XP. To avoid exploits, put the XP gains on the bosses on a increasing rate, where the first boss gives lower XP and the last boss gives alot of XP. Again, Hard Mode should give bonus XP.

Also realize that it's alot harder to put together a group for Dungeons and Trials compared to just soloing quests and grinding mobs. Every dungeon run and every trial includes alot of dead time, just waiting for everyone to show up or trying to find that elusive healer. This should be taken into account when calculating the amount of XP rewarded. 200K xp while Enlightened for a Trial is not unreasonable for the normal population (ignoring the top 1% elite playerbase who will benefit more due to faster runs).

Thanks for your time, I hope you will take a good look at the amount of XP rewarded for Dungeons and Trials.

Syldayan wrote: »

Make enlightement give you 1 cp per day. after that you need to farm xp per 400 000 for one another CP and no more.

With this system each day you log into your account you have 1 cp ( good for the peeps who dont have to much time for playing) and you can grind one another ( good for peeps who want more and have time ) .

And no more than 2 cp per day ( less grind and more play ) .

A bit harsh.

Honestly, is it that complicated ? 2 cp enlightement a day, 4 cp max. +20% xp all accross the board pvp/pve. Who's gonna complain ?
Casuals get 2 cp a day with no hassle (and the feeling of acomplishement), the hardcores get double.
And no "in need of severe addiction treatment freak" will spoil the fun for everyone else with 1000 cp in 3 months.
See ? Simple.

Ps: on a business note. You wont sell xp potion to help get 1 crappy cp ... And certainly not for the little help it gives to get a non enlightement cp.

So Ive been seeing a lot of concerns over the champion system and how it'll affect pvp,new,none grinder etc etc so here is my idea for the champion system.

Maybe something like a system cap on dlc's is the way to go eg from now to the next dlc max points you can get is like x amount then a new dlc arrives and the max points you can get then goes up to another x amount and so on so the points aren't getting to far ahead of new players and you'll still have your progression mmo and it'll just be tiered everybody wins zeni will get money because people have to buy dlc to progress and new players won't get so far behind and will be able to catch up.

I think also everyone's enlightenment clock should start at the same time whatever time you log on you obviously cap it a once a day per person, this way you can organise with friends and guild mates on times when to log so you've got automatic enlightenment and your ready to do what you need to do.

I want you to make sure no one is months ahead of everyone else because of bugs/exploits.

A brief history of XP and grind nerfing so well as I can remember it and what to do about your Champoion system as I detect you all may finally have realized you screwed the pooch.

The first nerf I remember was the 4 man dungeon mob nerf. This was probably the most popular hardcore gamer grind at launch. Mobs in these dungeons were numerous and paid good XP. People 2 man grind toons straight up to V10 in a few days just killing zombies in Wayrest Sewers. Then, as now, the quest was an insignificant portion of the XP in Vet dungeons and so mob killing it was. One guy I know did 7 toons to max level using this grind.

The next nerf I remember was the public dungeon nerf. Public dungeons have a lot of mobs and they used to pay normal mob xp. An even bigger bonus to this was that good players could easily solo and many of these dungeons made a nice circle. I remember the Eastmarch dungeon being particularly popular. I should not that when public dungeon grinding was popular there were a lot of choices and so things generally didn't get too crowded. The downside of the grind was the same as all public grinds, more people kill the XP so things generally get very contentious and vicious with people yelling, cussing, and trying to get each other to leave.

I'm not sure where the PVP kill quest nerf fit in but I remember that happening a long time ago. The PVP objective quests have never worked real well as they randomly assign you one that probably bears no resemblance to any strategically important objective. You can no longer cycle though these to get one that matters so you can't even clunkally shop. If you are lucky enough to have one that coincides with what you actually want to do and complete it you have to remove yourself from a fight for a long time to turn it in at which point you find out it's not worth much anyway. The exception to much of this was kill quests which used to be non-specific, decent xp wise, and endlessly repeatable. People ground them untill they were changed to one a day and they added class specific ones. This was amusing as you could monitor the disappearance of Sorcs and to some extent NB's from the game but it no longer added up to much XP.

More important than the PVP kill quest nerf was the PVP pot farming nerf. Serious PVP'rs are probably the most sophistic exploiters in the game (this latest keep bug is a great example of that.) The reason for this is obvious as they can realistically control both sides of a fight by making alliances or having other accounts in other alliances. One of their first exploits was to have toons in a second alliance. They would all take their alt toons out except for one guy and he would set up a bunch of oil pots and farm his guild mates for hours. This was nerfed by reducing xp gain for killing the same player again and again. The side effect of this was that all PVP'rs who are usually fighting the same defenders or aggressors again and again lost most of their xp. Eventually they would also prohibit alt toons in the same campaign as a further hurdle to various exploitative or treasonous activities. PVP has always been hard to control because of the player controlled nature of both sides of the fight. Realistically, even today, it is the the guilds and individuals who politic and exploit that have the most success and out gain other players in XP and AP many, many, times over.

Maybe this was when lower craiglorn was released. With that came a level cap increase and anomaly grinding. These world events paid great xp at first and after the first nerf on the first day still good but not great XP. People continued to group and grind them until the second nerf put a time out on xp from them making them un-grindable. The loot on these was also nerfed at the time of the second nerf. They really paid a lot of purples before that nerf.

I don't remember if the coldharbor zombies fit in here but they were popular until scaling was changed to heavily punish vet toons for killing under leveled mobs. It was a cheap grind killing weaksauce low leveled mobs but the nerf of it had the unintended effect of making questing on your max level toon a pretty low XP activity. This didn't matter at the time but it sure looms large now for people who ground up toons and have that option available to them.

Also popular at this time was grinding the trash mobs in trials. People would just bring a few folks into trials and kill the trash mobs before the boss.

Next came upper craig and the Scorpion and Whelwa grinds. By killing these overworld bosses without killing their adds they would instantly respawn. This made the grinds fast and efficient though breakable by grevers who would kill the adds and therefore very contentious. These were probably the most efficient grinds since the Wayrest grind and actually allowed fast leveling through vet ranks at one of the slowest vet leveling times in the game. I think the Scorpion grind lasted about 5 days before it's instant respawn mechanic was removed. At that time it was discovered the Whelwa boss had the same mechanic. ZOS response to this was a pretty far reaching and nerfed pretty much all boss XP to near mob level. No bosses have been worth much since. I should also note that this nerf hit the very popular, long standing, thief grind.

The funny thing about the time between lower and upper craiglorn and between upper craglorn and 1.6 is that some very good grinds did exist during these times and nobody much noticed or complained as people quietly ground alt toons to max level. Skyreach was a closely held secret in the endgame community at this time and Spellscar was a pretty popular place. Rukunzeldelf in lower craig was also popular but was itself ninja nerfed at some point. I would wager that given the low general XP in this game few max level toons were minted without these strategies.

Now we come to the Saturdays ninja mega nerf. Upper Craig delve mobs were one of the last full xp / mob scenarios. They weren't exploity requiring say instant boss respawns or treasonous cross alliance PVP farming. They were just full XP high level mobs that existed in high numbers and in an instanced dungeon so that the grind couldn't get over populated and vicious like say spellscar. Because of the lack of any other known options for getting XP endgame PVE players flocked to these in numbers more massive than I have probably ever seen for any other in game activity ever.

Now we sit in a state of the game where only a few areas of full XP mobs exist and probably all these are overland. Since overland sites are not instanced they pretty quickly get jammed up and become exercises in people yelling and pissing at each other to leave. Very un-fun.

Lets talk about the unintended consequences to those "legitimately playing" the game of all these nerfs. When questing almost all the XP was mobs. All of the mobs in delves now have the reduced delve XP. Any delve and world boss you encounter has the reduced boss XP. Overland mob areas are generally more crowded as little else gives much XP so your unlikely to find many of those to kill. Than you get your lousy turn in XP which may be the entire problem with the whole system. If you go to do your leveled 4 man dungeon or public dungeon you will be hit with the mob and boss nerfs. Do a trial and you get the trials mob nerfs. The bottom line is that all the nerfs that destroyed all those grinds had the unintended effect of equally reducing XP for those "legitimately playing" and it is now quite impossible to get that targeted 1 CP per hour while doing so.

You see, because no significant portion of the XP in the game ever came from quest turn ins and almost all of it came from mobs and bosses the XP was always very easy to get without doing the quests. The flip side of this was that when people were prevented from doing this by nerfing boss and mob xp they were also prevented from getting any xp from questing since the quest itself was never significant and those questing kill the same mobs and bosses.

So, what is the conclusion of all of this. I would say you need to hire an economist with some gaming experience to analyze your incentive structure and fix it as the activities you want people to do have never been extrinsically rewarding. You need to fire most of you leadership because they failed to see this and woefully misplaced priorities. You should promote the armor dying team as that was a perfect synergy of incentives for hardcore people, fun for casuals, and even clean execution. Truly it is a bright spot in a long history of terrible failures of which the Champion system I think will be the greatest because, not does adding an endless grind leveling progression system not count as new content, but MMO's have level caps for a reason.