Buff anchors

Alp · May 2017

Seriously. The dolmens at their current state are only a remote challenge when you are alone and with the current farming thing going on most dolmens look like this:

Maybe an idea would be to keep the current difficulty with 4 or fewer players there but after that start scaling up the number of enemies and general difficulty to match the number of players present at the time an anchor pinion is activated? It's just not remotely fun atm. unless you like pretty colours.

Nestor · May 2017

Good or bad, Huge Dolmen Zergs only seem to happen in a few zones (Alikir, Auridon and Deehsan). Most zones have much smaller player presence, but they do overwhelm the mobs most of the time even with the smaller groups.

What they really need to do is get rid of the 5 minute dolmen timer that was introduced with One Tamriel (or maybe it was earlier there was no reason to farm dolmens before 1T). Although this will not eliminate the zerg, it would cut it down to just the people farming certain set jewelry.

Even nerfing the Exp would not cut down on the set item zergs.

Sakiri · May 2017

What would getting rid of the timer do?

Chilly-McFreeze · May 2017

It would it make harder for Zergs to estimate what anchor spawns when. But I always thought there is only one anchor "ready"/active at a time. Strange.

However, what could be done? Scale even more with the number of players? E.g. 0-5 players Monster in normale mode, 5-10 monsters/bosses in vet mode, 10+ hardmode. Of course it needs to be a tad stronger than group dungeon counterparts at vet/ hard mode.

Rex-Umbra · May 2017

That many players, should be trial difficulty

Chilly-McFreeze · May 2017

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

That many players, should be trial difficulty

Yeah, I imagine 12 fresh players accidentially meeting at an anchor getting one shotted - the rage on the forums - a man can dream...

Alp · May 2017

I'm not saying anchors should be impossible but atm. if you run into one during a moment like this it's so easy it isn't the least bit fun.

edit: wrote trials instead of anchors..

dpencil1 · May 2017

- Increase resistances of Dolmen mobs to 18200.
- Double final boss HP

That would be a good start.

They could also implement a simular rule to killing the Molag Bal Simulcrum, where only the top 12 players get the chest.

Do that and decrease the cooldown to 2.5 minutes, so people could just camp the Dolmen they want.

Chilly-McFreeze · May 2017

dpencil1 wrote: »

- Increase resistances of Dolmen mobs to 18200.
- Double final boss HP

That would be a good start.

They could also implement a simular rule to killing the Molag Bal Simulcrum, where only the top 12 players get the chest.

Do that and decrease the cooldown to 2.5 minutes, so people could just camp the Dolmen they want.

Would be a start but with 20+ people running wild this would barely make a difference. The scaling would need to be very sensitive to not rob all the fun for newer players or pugs. Loot-cap would lower the incentive to do dolmens to nearly zero. Also farming + rng is bad enough, no need to make it even worse.

Reducing cooldown would only leed to letting some players camp instead of chase it. It would still be over populated.

But on the other end, don't know what a zergball cold stop or at least slow down. Probably really vet trial difficulty.

Sakiri · May 2017

Loot cap just sounds like a terrible idea.

QuebraRegra · May 2017

aren't they fixing the dolmen botting in the upcoming patch with some sort of "overload charge" or something?

dpencil1 · May 2017

The bot fix is only for stationary players. If a group of 15-20 people are actively farming dolmens together it won't effect them at all.

I agree loot caps suck, but it's an effective way of disincentivizing huge groups farming the same spot. It would force people to spread out to other dolmens, and reducing the cooldown would make camping one spot less problematic for people who want to do that.

Wanting vet trial difficulty is totally unreasonable. Super fine tuned scaling may also be problematic from a coding and processing standpoint.

The suggestions I made would be pretty easy to implement as all the code is in the game already and would effectively disincentivize huge groups from dolmen farming together, which is the complaint this thread was all about.

Chilly-McFreeze · May 2017

dpencil1 wrote: »

The bot fix is only for stationary players. If a group of 15-20 people are actively farming dolmens together it won't effect them at all.

I agree loot caps suck, but it's an effective way of disincentivizing huge groups farming the same spot. It would force people to spread out to other dolmens, and reducing the cooldown would make camping one spot less problematic for people who want to do that.

Wanting vet trial difficulty is totally unreasonable. Super fine tuned scaling may also be problematic from a coding and processing standpoint.

The suggestions I made would be pretty easy to implement as all the code is in the game already and would effectively disincentivize huge groups from dolmen farming together, which is the complaint this thread was all about.

Super easy, right, but not effective.

And what is unreasonable to have 10-20 players face mobs/ bosses that usually got killed by 4 man groups?

Loot caps would only raise frustration. Is it my failure that there is a farm train running wild, leaving me with no loot? I would hate that.

Alp · May 2017

Loot caps could just mean the new people wouldn't have a chance of getting any loot.

Banana · May 2017

No amount of buffs are going to make a difference if there's a zerg waiting

GreenSoup2HoT · May 2017

SUPER WORLD BOSS ANCHORS! PLEASE!

Dapper Dinosaur · May 2017

Just make anchors spawn Imperial City roaming bosses if there are more than 10 players present. Problem solved.

Katinas · May 2017

I see little difference to the infamous Bleakers exploit. I would welcome ZOS to remove all gold and items from AFK people's inventories.

Alp · May 2017

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

Just make anchors spawn Imperial City roaming bosses if there are more than 10 players present. Problem solved.

ha yeah, something like that. Atm. it just feels like Mollybae is throwing his pawns directly to their death. They rarely ever get a hit in these cases. Show us what a daedric prince can do when he means business.

Oakmontowls_ESO · May 2017

Katinas wrote: »

I see little difference to the infamous Bleakers exploit. I would welcome ZOS to remove all gold and items from AFK people's inventories.

The people AFK attacking at dolems is breaking ToS. On the other hand the zergs actively farming dolems does not break ToS at all. The only reason the bleakers exploit was bad was because it was in pvp and they don't seem to want cross alliance cooperation in pvp. Also the people AFK at the dolems were just doing it for the xp not gold or set items.

Alp · May 2017

Oakmontowls_ESO wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

I see little difference to the infamous Bleakers exploit. I would welcome ZOS to remove all gold and items from AFK people's inventories.

The people AFK attacking at dolems is breaking ToS. On the other hand the zergs actively farming dolems does not break ToS at all. The only reason the bleakers exploit was bad was because it was in pvp and they don't seem to want cross alliance cooperation in pvp. Also the people AFK at the dolems were just doing it for the xp not gold or set items.

It's not as much about breaking the ToS to me. It's just not fun to do dolmens with this many people.

Feanor · May 2017

I'd like dolmens to not be soloable. They should be notch down to world boss difficulty. Molag Bal sends his generals to defend them after all.

RoyJade · May 2017

What I would like in term of buff :
- midhealth irresistible damage when a mob hit the ground (dangerous when too much people are here, since you don't see the impact).
- far more monsters, at least as much as players (with a cap of course, like 15), popping in waves ; with the first change it would bring a lot of difficulties for no-brain zerg, it would require movement.
- "world boss" type trash monster, with same damage and health as WB adds, and "world boss" difficulty for final bosses.
- more reactive mobs, with huge distant attack (since close ranged already need to deal with the spawn aoe) and aoe target centered spells (in order to force people to spread).
- warden-like enemies with a major aoe defile.
- greater mid-boss who really need a focus in order to be taken down.

Chilly-McFreeze · May 2017

RoyJade wrote: »

- midhealth irresistible damage when a mob hit the ground (dangerous when too much people are here, since you don't see the impact).

Indeed. In addition to that huge slow circling but hard hitting AoE in the outer fields around the dolmen, let's say in typical bot-user range. Would also be hard to see if a zerg rushes in, deals with AFK farmers, forces participants to engage in close combat -> higher danger bc you literally have to stand in the mobs. All that while it would be easy enough to avoid for small groups or solo player.

Or like a giant negate dome that only deals damage on the outer edge.

This could also easily be explained lore wise as some sort defense mechanism.

Tiitus · May 2017

Alp wrote: »

Oakmontowls_ESO wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

I see little difference to the infamous Bleakers exploit. I would welcome ZOS to remove all gold and items from AFK people's inventories.

The people AFK attacking at dolems is breaking ToS. On the other hand the zergs actively farming dolems does not break ToS at all. The only reason the bleakers exploit was bad was because it was in pvp and they don't seem to want cross alliance cooperation in pvp. Also the people AFK at the dolems were just doing it for the xp not gold or set items.

It's not as much about breaking the ToS to me. It's just not fun to do dolmens with this many people.

Why are people always trying to make things cater to them wen they can actively avoid the situation they are complaining about or asking to change.. just go to a less populated zone if u want to do "harder" dolmens? There are only 3 zones that have a Zerg farm on dolmens, the rest is there for yur enjoyment.. this is up there with "remove fast travel" it's dumb.. I dnt like pvp but u dnt see me asking for it removed seeing as I can avoid it, even wen farming up "assault" and "support" skill line.

Rev Rielle · May 2017

Just cutting the experience (or having it on diminishing returns or something) is all they need to do to stop the incessant farming that goes on. Also stopping the dolmens from spawning with clockwork regularity would be good also. Finally, yes, they should be increased in difficultly significantly: Molag Bal is trying to take over Tamriel after all, these things need to be harder.

I thought there was talk that with the update you would only be able to gain experience from dolmens every 5-10 minutes or so? But I've found nothing in the notes so I assume that's just someone's wishful thinking.

SHADOW2KK · May 2017

Dolmens have been face roll easy to solo for years, even before CPs came into play.

If anything, they should have the difficulty of them ramped up significantly to the level they were for us who played from the start of the game in 2014.

Considering they are meant to be staging areas for Daedric invasions.

Just saying.

This will make it more interesting for those of us who can solo them with our eyes closed, and for newer, or lesser experienced players having to group up or at least be there in some numbers, like it was in the deeps of time.

Twohothardware · May 2017

The problem isn't with the difficulty of anchors, the problem is with the number of players in that zones server instance. When Tamriel One was about to release I was under the impression that there would be numerous server instances for each zone and that zones would be populated but not overpopulated.

Right now certain zones are majorly overpopulated and it not only kills the difficulty in completing Dolmens but it also IMO really ruins the in game immersion when you have so many players in one area and it makes it difficult to find good farming spots when everyone is at the popular ones fighting over mob kills. Not to mention the total cluster #$%! of lag during the holiday events.

ZoS needs to simply restrict the number of players in each zone to a lower number per instance.