It's very difficult to consistently experience the raids & DSA

Shadowstep2003 · December 2015

V16 PS4 NA

This post is mostly towards the devs in hopes that they may offer some feedback. I imagine any developer who puts in the time to create something they are proud of would want to see their end product being experienced by as many people as possible

I've only experienced Dragonstar Arena a couple of times and I really enjoyed it. As for the raids (I think they are 12 man?) I have yet to experience a single one and I would really like to. Coming from a WoW background I imagine they have to require quite a bit of coordination and offer a totally different experience from veteran dungeon content, but alas I can't be sure.

I understand this content only scales to v14 but for me there are days when it's not about the gear. I have played long enough to the point where I wouldn't mind just doing something different every now and then instead of efficiently trying to improve my character.

I would love to be able to experience this (new for me) content on consistent basis, but it can be very difficult at times to find a group to run with.

The people hanging around the undaunted guys are typically there to get their pledges for the day done so I often fail when asking in that location.

I have been unable to find a group finder option for this content so this is not an avenue I can take

In my experience both on this site (guild forums) and in this game it seems like the majority of guilds promote themselves as traders or pvp guilds.
The few PVE guilds that I have attempted to join have a barren guild chat and there is no sense of community or communication besides a daily note advertising
a raffle or something similar.

I know the devs have to utilize some kind of stat tracking tools. I'm wondering how much of their playerbase is actively consuming this content (DSA, raids) and is it an acceptable figure? Are there any plans to re-promote this content or incorporate additional features/functionality in order to make it easier to experience?

Thanks for your time

s7732425ub17_ESO · December 2015

Barely any guilds run Trials anymore. There is zero incentive to do so. All of the players who can lead trials groups don't want to do it anymore because it's the same old same old thing they've done a hundred times. The lack of drops kills it. Hell, if the bosses had a chance to drop a gold temper or something like that, I'm sure people would be running them a whole lot more.

There ALWAYS has to be a reason to do a piece of content. Fun comes second. Trials are actually really fun, especially for new players. But with no reason to do them, no one is going to touch them.

If I get 12 players together, would you rather run Trials which most everyone has done or run through the IC sewers, getting thousands of Tel Var stones and good gear drops. Obvious answer is obvious. Newer content is canabalizing older content. The same can be said for VDSA. Most of the Maelstrom drops are significantly better, and VDSA caps out at VR14 making most of the drops useless.

TX11 · December 2015

send me a message on psn. I will invite you to bhd. we run trials on Thursdays and sundays and we run dsa just about anytime there is a group. We have a very active guild chat channel and almost always have a trader. We don't care about the loot being geared perfect to us or not we just want to have fun with guild members. Currently we have people trying to beat vet dsa.

Fissh · December 2015

Content is simply to old and irrelevant. A simple scaling to v16 would fix that a bit. They never really catered to the "progressive raid player". Shame.

Baconfat79 · December 2015

It's a real shame. Aetherian Archives and Hel-Ra Citadel were the most fun I've had in this game, and they are both dead content now. Come on, ZoS...buff the mobs to V16 level, add some relevant gear to the loot tables, and revitalize that content. It can't be that hard to do. Craglorn in general is the best content in the game, I think, and it's all dead. Those delves and quest-lines were beautifully designed, and it's a real shame that so many players will never experience it.

LadyNalcarya · December 2015

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Barely any guilds run Trials anymore. There is zero incentive to do so. All of the players who can lead trials groups don't want to do it anymore because it's the same old same old thing they've done a hundred times. The lack of drops kills it. Hell, if the bosses had a chance to drop a gold temper or something like that, I'm sure people would be running them a whole lot more.

There ALWAYS has to be a reason to do a piece of content. Fun comes second. Trials are actually really fun, especially for new players. But with no reason to do them, no one is going to touch them.

If I get 12 players together, would you rather run Trials which most everyone has done or run through the IC sewers, getting thousands of Tel Var stones and good gear drops. Obvious answer is obvious. Newer content is canabalizing older content. The same can be said for VDSA. Most of the Maelstrom drops are significantly better, and VDSA caps out at VR14 making most of the drops useless.

Pretty much this.
Trials are fun, but when you've done them a lot of times, there should be some kind of incentive to do them again. Sometimes I join trials in my casual guild, and do vdsa with my group, but finding people for raids becomes harder and harder every time. People simply dont want to do the content when they got achievements/dyes already, just because its not rewarding and all gear drops are useless for vr16 chars.
Also, weekly trial leaderboard rewards are bugged atm and youre not getting anything for your score.
I really want trials to be competitive again, and I dont understand why Zos cant just scale all this content to vr16. It shouldnt be too hard and it will us motivation to play. After all, they scaled all old dungeons to vr16 and added scaling to veteran City of Ash that was previously available only in vr14 version.

Shadowstep2003 · December 2015

TX11 wrote: »

send me a message on psn. I will invite you to bhd. we run trials on Thursdays and sundays and we run dsa just about anytime there is a group. We have a very active guild chat channel and almost always have a trader. We don't care about the loot being geared perfect to us or not we just want to have fun with guild members. Currently we have people trying to beat vet dsa.

Thank you, I will shoot you an invite. I would love to find a permanent PVE guild that is active and communicates.

Thanks

TX11 · December 2015

Shadowstep2003 wrote: »

TX11 wrote: »

send me a message on psn. I will invite you to bhd. we run trials on Thursdays and sundays and we run dsa just about anytime there is a group. We have a very active guild chat channel and almost always have a trader. We don't care about the loot being geared perfect to us or not we just want to have fun with guild members. Currently we have people trying to beat vet dsa.

Thank you, I will shoot you an invite. I would love to find a permanent PVE guild that is active and communicates.

Thanks

just send me a message on psn and I will shoot you an invite.

Maldamus · December 2015

Just to chime in on this, the Op is eloquent and raises valid concerns, in a well constructed manner.
For the good of the overall game this post in particular deserves attention, it highlights admirably serious flaws.
Regardless of which platform he plays on this is true across the board.

Zos, you seriously need to start concerning yourselves with these issues, they will not go away and they will, if present direction is maintained escalate.

You as a company have some amazing, great fun content, but without the scaling, rewards its been debased to pointless. This has been an issue in many a MMO before, YOUR playerbase is asking you not to blindly follow within the same footsteps, TAKE HEED.

Op, I am glad to hear you have found what could be a resolution to your concerns, but it remains a concern throughout the MMO genre, that these issues continue to arise. Zos has, rightly so won awards with ESO:TU, but they could actually win so much more if they would address issues such as this, also the crippling game performances we are now enduring, this game has SO MUCH POTENTIAL, yet the lack of effective resolutions is seriously hindering.

For your own company's sake and your playerbases, please have a serious rethink on the above mentioned in this thread.

Xellos77 · December 2015

I feel your pain, OP. I've wanted to check out trials and unfortunately the interest has waned with my unrelenting playing of ESO.

Truth is truth, however, and it is that this is a single player RPG with a hint of MMO content. People are spread too thin in guilds, reason to replay non-updated content is missing, and sometimes getting a solid dungeon group together is taxing, let alone commitment from 12 people.

I raided in WoW years ago and it was always awesome. As a guild, coming together and making the best of a Friday night with laughter, beer, and triumph.

Here? My first experience in DSA our tank goes to eat dinner. Ten or fifteen minutes, right? Nope. An hour and fifteen later. Of course by that time we tried to get a replacement without success, and disbanded. We were doing perfectly fine too. There's just little commitment in ESO like in other MMOs. I daresay it's the casual man's MMO.

dimensional · December 2015

Xellos77 wrote: »

Here? My first experience in DSA our tank goes to eat dinner. Ten or fifteen minutes, right? Nope. An hour and fifteen later. Of course by that time we tried to get a replacement without success, and disbanded. We were doing perfectly fine too. There's just little commitment in ESO like in other MMOs. I daresay it's the casual man's MMO.

To be fair though that sounds like the fault of your tank and not ZOS or ESO. That being said I do agree group content and grouping experience itself could be improved.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · December 2015

Its difficult to experience the raids (trials) and DSA because ZOSE no longer supports them. They have intentionally refused to update these experiences to V16 in order to promote their new DLC instead.

Everyone is supposed to forget they even existed and by all hyped for Failstrom Arena and the new thieves guild trial.

But one day even these experiences will be out of date when ZOSE pumps out more DLC, increases the gear gate, then you will never be able to find a group to run those old trials because no one wants to run them and is too busy grinding for gear again.

Welcome to the stripmining of endgame content.

Maldamus · December 2015

I feel your pain, OP. I've wanted to check out trials and unfortunately the interest has waned with my unrelenting playing of ESO.

Truth is truth, however, and it is that this is a single player RPG with a hint of MMO content. People are spread too thin in guilds, reason to replay non-updated content is missing, and sometimes getting a solid dungeon group together is taxing, let alone commitment from 12 people.

I raided in WoW years ago and it was always awesome. As a guild, coming together and making the best of a Friday night with laughter, beer, and triumph.

Here? My first experience in DSA our tank goes to eat dinner. Ten or fifteen minutes, right? Nope. An hour and fifteen later. Of course by that time we tried to get a replacement without success, and disbanded. We were doing perfectly fine too. There's just little commitment in ESO like in other MMOs. I daresay it's the casual man's MMO.

This also is true, seems to be some systemic issues that are forbidding people to having the great community, guild, raid mentality that is essential to a MMO, do not get me wrong, I myself have never ever completed any trial, only had one aborted attempt in all this time since January '14. However that is because after levelling I found the PVP to be highly enjoyable, but the fact is the people who WAS the raid guilds, pve/p have left the game, many no longer to return, that burgeoning sense of community, in either field of the game is slowly dwindling.

In essence because purely there is nothing to bind them, please for YOUR sakes and us the players, try to redeem this, granted the game seems to be growing, the last DLC was awesome, nobody objective could deny that.But too much of the remaining community are going without what is needed to bind that community, with these kind of dlc releases.

HebrewHatchet · December 2015

I agree. I don't have much to add here, just looking to add feedback and numbers on this thread. My biggest problem with this game is the grouping and waiting. You can hang out for 2 hours trying to form a group for end game content and still fail at forming any kind of viable group. I'm in several guilds, but unfortunately they are all dying. I don't know the solution, only the problem.

Khaos_Bane · December 2015

Fissh wrote: »

Content is simply to old and irrelevant. A simple scaling to v16 would fix that a bit. They never really catered to the "progressive raid player". Shame.

This is true and it sucks.

dimensional · December 2015

Best thing you can do is search for and join new active guilds with a decent membership.

Flaminir · December 2015

Just to add another voice to the very eloquent post the OP has written... we've found the same... virtually nobody wants to run them anymore. Few people are blessed with the time to run stuff 'just for the *** & giggles'... there has to be at least some reason, whether that's XP, Skill level increase, the chance of gear drop etc.

We used to have two trials events per week at minimum.... now its down to one every few months just for achievements for newbies.

I REALLY hope that ZoS does something to make this content relevant again.

It should be SOOOO simple.... just bump the XP.... add V16 gear to the end boss loot table.

This is literally just changing a couple of numbers around. There's no need to worry about balance... V16 gear is already here, just make the stats the same... or make existing V16 gear drop there.... undaunted sets/mini jewellery sets.... ANYTHING!

Making existing trials/DSA relevant again is the easiest change ZoS will ever make as its purely down to final boss loot table reward..... The only reason I can think of is some weird convoluted reason to do with getting people to buy new DLC content instead.

Maldamus · December 2015

I will say one thing and I believe it should hold true, you name your RAIDS a TRIAL, that should hold true for all levels, do this and I think you will have greater success.

Flaminir · December 2015

Maldamus wrote: »

I will say one thing and I believe it should hold true, you name your RAIDS a TRIAL, that should hold true for all levels, do this and I think you will have greater success.

Interesting idea... are you suggesting something akin to battle levelling for trials?

dimensional · December 2015

IMO *all* of the content should be accessible by anyone at any level. I don't necessarily mean things like items and skills and stuff related to character development but otherwise I do believe that the actual game content should be way more open than it is, and the loot scaling in relevance to their character's levels like how Orsinium is. They need to retool Craglorn and Cadwell's silver + gold for this reason.

Khaos_Bane · December 2015

dimensional wrote: »

IMO *all* of the content should be accessible by anyone at any level. I don't necessarily mean things like items and skills and stuff related to character development but otherwise I do believe that the actual game content should be way more open than it is, and the loot scaling in relevance to their character's levels like how Orsinium is. They need to retool Craglorn and Cadwell's silver + gold for this reason.

I they had a completely open world and at least flagged open world PvP it would make a LOT of people happy.

dimensional · December 2015

Well, they mentioned something akin to a duel system being in the works on their latest ESO live, and I *do* believe they are working towards making every zone level scaling except for the first 5 faction zones. So, it should happen in theory if they move forward with those plans.

eliisra · December 2015

No one really runs trials + vDSA any more since the gear is outdated. I guess a few better groups still breezes through for free leaderboard gold thingies, but that's it.

Even in guilds, there's no interest and almost impossible to get 12 players willing to run normal trials, since 0 incentive with the gear being lower level.

Than there's the other problems with ESO, the huge lack of active and community style PvE guilds. Even prior to trials getting outdated, you would struggle finding an active guild that focused on doing regular PvE raids, DSA and daily pledges. Now it's even worse, almost impossible.

Most guilds are for trading, some casual and rest are PvP focused. Than there's a handful of elite/leaderboard PvE guilds, not really open to new players or average riff raff.

What I've learned from playing ESO almost 2 years is that jumping from guild to guild to get action, isn't the solution. You will still stand alone in some capital city and be frustrated. Need to build up a friend-list with nice people, tanks, healers and good dps, if you want to do PvE content and get groups in reasonable time.

I just can't depend on guilds here carrying and teaching me content the way I would do(successfully) in other MMORPG's. Need to be a lot more active and take initiatives here. Really no clue why that is actually, but my experience.

Maldamus · December 2015

Maldamus wrote: »

I will say one thing and I believe it should hold true, you name your RAIDS a TRIAL, that should hold true for all levels, do this and I think you will have greater success.

Interesting idea... are you suggesting something akin to battle levelling for trials?

Not quite, but something of a similar idea, post 50 dependant on group size/avg level scale to the mean maybe, I believe wow managed to implement something similar, I haven't played wow in years, quite frankly would never return either, but if they can invest the time and resources to provide such functionality, I see absolutely no reason why ZOS can not.

Undoubtedly it will cost, time money and resources, but the end product is actively extending the length and replayability of all ready produced content.For the initial reinvestment I can see nothing but gains, if people have a replayabiltiy factor that is still relevant, then the onus of the developer to 'churn out' more & more content that is consumable is diminished, this in turn would (rose tinted glasses) give them more manoeuverability in developing fresh and interesting content without the pressure.

pretzl · December 2015

As several people here have stated, there just isn't an incentive to do trials anymore.
I'm the guildmaster and raidleader of a PvE raiding guild on EU PC Megaserver, AD side. We try to do raids twice a week, but often see ourselves lacking members due to the ongoing changes to the game and the lack of incentive overall. We have a solid 4man doing DSA (2nd place EU), but outside of DSA, trials just aren't feasible to do at this time. I'm sure once a new trial is introduced or the current trials are scaled, it'll generate interest again, but until then it's kindof a dead feat in the game.

That said, and I don't want to make this a guild recruitment post, we're actively looking for people who are of a higher level in PvE or who wish to become this should there be interest for it. We run both a more "core group" aswell as a casual group for newbies

KaylynT · December 2015

Hi. Having the same problem here.Not enough people to run with. I'm usually on Saturday thru Monday. So if you need another player i'm game. VR16 sorc with EP. PSN: aaronpua

Kalante · December 2015

I did a lot of trials other than sanctum. It's just not worth it. You get better loot in a chest. I did liked one great sword i got once. The yokoda something it was a nice looking sword.

Sallington · December 2015

This is the first MMO I've ever played where there was a period of not one single piece of end-game PvE content. It's a great way to have guilds fall apart and have people lose interest. I know I did. I unsubbed 1 week after Orsinium launched.

Xellos77 · December 2015

dimensional wrote: »

Xellos77 wrote: »

Here? My first experience in DSA our tank goes to eat dinner. Ten or fifteen minutes, right? Nope. An hour and fifteen later. Of course by that time we tried to get a replacement without success, and disbanded. We were doing perfectly fine too. There's just little commitment in ESO like in other MMOs. I daresay it's the casual man's MMO.

To be fair though that sounds like the fault of your tank and not ZOS or ESO. That being said I do agree group content and grouping experience itself could be improved.

Of course I know it's not ZOS' fault here. My point was that the community at large is far more scattered and flighty than in every other MMO I've ever played. When there's a guild of over 200 people, for example, and only ~3% of them are ever in chat, a measly four people cannot commit to a "dungeon night", and Trials are a pipe dream, it says something about the player base. It's fickle and non-committed. Casual. There's nothing wrong with that, but this game should have been marketed as a hybrid MMO, not a straight MMO. Too many elements are missing for it to be a true-blue MMO.

Nikkiy · December 2015

Xellos77 wrote: »

Here? My first experience in DSA our tank goes to eat dinner. Ten or fifteen minutes, right? Nope. An hour and fifteen later. Of course by that time we tried to get a replacement without success, and disbanded. We were doing perfectly fine too. There's just little commitment in ESO like in other MMOs. I daresay it's the casual man's MMO.

Yes, blame the game for the players you choose to run with!! -.-

Alcast · December 2015

ZOS said that they will increase the Weekly rewards from those trials to v16 in the upcomig patch. Tho good luck getting a spot in there

Leaderboards will consist of 2 guilds each on NA/EU servers because everyone has like 6+ v16 chars.