As all/most of you know, Zenimax is apparently planning to nerf the 3 remaining (somewhat) challenging dungeons in the DB update.

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Hey Folks,

Regarding White Gold Tower, Imperial City Prison and Veteran City of Ash: We have adjusted their balance down a bit. We hear the feedback and appreciate the passion for this content but, we were not happy with the difficulty to complete these and wanted to ease that burden. Those three dungeons are still not a walk in the park but they shouldn't be quite the roadblock they are now.

I've already bit...stated my unhappiness with that fact in several threads here but I would like to actually try to be constructive here. I understand this will probably get ignored but perhaps there's an off chance someone might actually take notice. @ZOS_Finn, @ZOS_GinaBruno , @ZOS?

I'm assuming in that decision you're coming from the stats you have regarding the completion of those dungeons; you must've found the stats too low, deeming those dungeons too challenging for an average player. I can understand that. It makes sense you'd want to change that somehow - after all, it's your job to cater to the majority, not the tiny hardcore club you have here.

But I don't think that's enough reason for more nerfs. Sure nerfing it is the easiest copout. Reduce the damage, reduce the health, increase the times between mechanics and you'll have less people crying about the difficulty. But do you really think it's the best solution? There will always be people struggling with some content unless you nerf it to Wayrest Sewers level(...actually I think there're still some people struggling with Wayrest. Does it mean it needs a nerf too?). You want all of your playerbase to be able to complete the content and feel accomplished for that, that's a great goal but if you go down the nerf road, only way you can achieve it if you nerf it to where it's possible to complete solo, naked and using fists for weapons. That way you'll make sure absolutely anyone can make it without having to worry about build, set armor, grouping or figuring out skills. ...question is, is anyone actually going to feel accomplished after that?

You have already nerfed IC dungeons at least twice and it hasn't been enough. How many more times til it is? Maybe it's time to consider other solutions. Let's talk about what else can be done to improve playerbase experience with those dungeons and dungeons in general.

(Warning:this is gonna be a lot of text lol)

For starters, as someone else mentioned in another thread, the game does a very poor job of introducing people to the dungeons. It's their first MMO for a great lot of people and the Undaunted introduction quest could do so much better at explaining to them what it is all about. A lot of people don't even have any idea about what a tank/healer/dps is. A great lot of people don't know what a taunt is(I sure didn't back then lol). Why isn't there an NPC explaining that in some lore-friendly way? Conversation options would be something like "Tank/healer/dps sounds interesting to me. *choose tank* - Tank's role is to minimize the damage taken by their group, keeping the attention of the enemy on himself. Using shield&sword lets you do that most efficiently. It's also helpful if the tank can immobilize or otherwise take out of combat large groups of mobs to prevent them from damaging the team(see CC)" etc.
Next up, group finder. How many more threads do we need on forums about "why did my level 25 character just have to do vet 16 dungeon?" until we can have an actual explanation of how it works inside the group finder? I don't mind answering those threads, but why isn't that explained in the game? Why do we have to empirically find out that grouping via groupfinder scales everyone to v16, grouping via zchat scales dungeon to groupleader, inviting someone right after starting groupfinder used to still scale everyone but now it doesn't anymore?

While on that note, why is there so much hidden secret knowledge in the game? It's pretty easy on the whole but so many things never get explained. Like there's physical and spell resistance hardcaps which a large number of people don't even know about - and how would they if the game tells you exactly nothing even when you hit them? Why do your spells scale with max magicka and spelldamage but shields and pets(for sorc) only with max magicka, and the only way to find this is to ask an experienced friend or test it yourself?
...while on that note, did you guys(meaning players, not @ZOS XD) know that your spells' synergies scale with synergizer's highest stat and therefore their damage has in fact absolutely nothing to do with the value listed in the tooltip?

...ahm, I'm going a bit off topic now...

Back to the actual dungeon experience...you frequently hear everyone only wants experienced players and there's no room for newer people to learn. It's only partially true. Yes a lot of (experienced) players would rather run with their own crowd to get their stuff done asap. That's okay, it makes sense. But a lot of us actually enjoy showing newer people the ropes - at least as long as they're willing to listen. If I have the time I don't mind wiping with a random pug for hours, we all start somewhere. I'll try my best to not sound like an elitist ass, explain stuff and give useful tips.

If you feel the dungeon's successful completion rate is unsatisfactory, how about make use of those people instead? You used to publish articles on your site about player builds. Why not make something similar about dungeon mechanics perhaps? There can be different strategies to the bosses and most of us don't mind sharing them. Or perhaps dungeon groups' setups? For instance something like 3 dps+templar tank can work fairly well due to offheals. Or NB tank. Or several NB dps because those offheals. People can share their preferred/special group setups and how they work in dungeons, perhaps giving others some insight as for how it should work. (Not sure that's the best idea, just thinking.)

You could start official threads on the topic where people could ask questions and get helpful answers.
You could show support to dungeon videos/streams.
You could perhaps introduce some kind of system in game where players could optionally mark themselves as "dungeon newbie" and "dungeon guide" or something. "Dungeon guides" would get paired up with "dungeon newbies" and perhaps get some kind of reward if they get the team through the dungeon successfully. I'm very wary of suggesting such a system as anything with "reward" in it is probably open to abuse but it COULD work. Just off the top of my mind, such "extra roles" could be completely optional. If you preferred to be neither you could avoid choosing anything. But if you were a new player looking for some experienced help or an experienced player enjoying helping a new person you could profit from such a system.

Players aside, introduce the damn practice dummies already. They're for more casual folks as much as the l33t ones. L33t ones usually have a friendly tank ready to go practice their rotation on Bloodspawn, newer players don't do that so much and those who do want to better themselves need to practice rotations somehow. Perhaps have some NPCs(Undaunted ones? That would make sense) that'd explain some simple things to players in need, the basics like rolldodging/breaking free in time/doing some rotation etc. Perhaps have some kind of test fight near those dummies that'd actually be challenging, do no damage to your armor(No repairs), yield no loot nor xp and serve purely for practice purposes. An Undaunted NPC you can spar with and see how long you last perhaps? Once you die(perhaps give him a slow enrage mechanic so that everyone dies eventually but it's a question of how long you can last), he could give you some tips such as "you did great but your damage could've been a tad bit higher" or "hey man, I think you forgot to break free there!". That way you could improve without even having to interact with other players. Perhaps separate NPCs for tank/dps/heals practice as well? There are many ways to learn already in the game but seems it's not enough and a lot of players seem to feel shy approaching other players for advice, perhaps an NPC would help them more?

You cannot endlessly nerf the content. At some point you'll have to start educating people about how to complete it without nerfs, unless you're actually content with being purely story-driven and having most mobs die from 1-2 light attacks(because this sure is where this is going). Perhaps do it now before it's too late...if it already isn't.

To anyone who actually bothered to read that far congratulations, you win a ...what are your (constructive) ideas about what could be done besides the nerfs to make dungeon experience overall easier for less experienced players?