More overland dailies would be great (for casuals, soloists, etc.)

theslynx · October 2017

As a casual player (with poor latency to servers), I'd love to see more dailies for reward packages. Dolmens, delves and dungeons are fine, but repetitive. For instance, the delve dailies repeat a lot, but ZoS doesn't want to redo each delve to add daily mission components. Why not ask players to do a bunch of generic overland activities instead, keeping the development (relatively) minimal?

Dailies that encourage us to explore particular zones make sense to me, since that's a huge part of what makes the Elder Scrolls attractive in the first place. Games like Destiny do this, and it makes just wandering about fun and moderately rewarding. In theory, it could also help solo players to find in-game friends, as you'd have a bunch of people running about the same map and trying to do similar content like World Bosses. Many of the people I've met in-game came from stumbling upon World Boss fights or forming impromptu alliances with others at Public Dungeons.

An example of what I'm talking about:

Alliance Scouting Dailies
Game chooses a zone (not Starter zones, DLC or Coldharbour), chooses four tasks for that zone. Players complete three of the tasks, turn it in for a Merits package to your Alliance liason/bounty board. Small chance for a Treasure Map for that region as an extra reward. Small chance at a furniture item in the style of one of the dominant races in that zone as an extra reward.

Zone tasks.
- Kill 25 (Werewolves/Bandits/etc.) and 25 (other enemy type)
- Harvest 10 times from nodes or enemies
- Defeat a World Boss
- Bring down two Dolmens
- Complete any Delve
- Find three hidden treasures
- Craft three items
- Deal, heal or block X damage in the Pub-Dungeon
- Collect 10 dropped items from enemies at (particular area; item is vendor junk that drops occasionally when you have the quest active)

In theory, it'd be nice to see even more activities added (e.g. twice an hour, a bunch of enemies attack a settlement, and players can help defend it.), although I realise that's more work.

That's it. Thanks for reading.

tl;dr - It would be great to see new exploration dailies for (casual) players.

Edit: why was this thread moved?

idk · October 2017

There are many dailies.

Besides the FG, MG and Undaunted dailies there are dailies in each DLC and Morrowind. The. There are a ron of dailies in Cyrodiil though beware of enemy players, but that's half the fun. The Cyrodiil PvE quests that reset daily are required to get the hero of Tamriel title iirc.

Edit: forgot about Craglorn.

theslynx · October 2017

idk wrote: »

There are many dailies.

Besides the FG, MG and Undaunted dailies there are dailies in each DLC and Morrowind. The. There are a ron of dailies in Cyrodiil though beware of enemy players, but that's half the fun. The Cyrodiil PvE quests that reset daily are required to get the hero of Tamriel title iirc.

Sure, but a/ a lot of those dailies get repetitive quickly as they cover only a few quests each, and b/ they tend to be 'go here, do this,' which is a wayshrine and a few minutes of rushing to the finish line. There's nothing to nudge players towards just wandering about these huge zones ZoS has painstakingly created. An open-ended system with multiple objectives makes roaming about more interesting and rewarding.

Also, c/ PvP is laggy, frustrating gibberish if you're not close to the EU or NA servers.

VaranisArano · October 2017

Fighters Guild daily asks you to defeat three dolmens in a zone.
Mages Guild daily asked you to get a relic from a public dungeon.
Craglorn has lots of quest-based dailies.
The Gold Coast has two quest based and two world boss dailies.
Wrothgar has 6 world boss dailies and delve dailies, Vvardenfell has 6 world boss dailies, plus others. Clockwork City will have similar dailies.
The Undaunted daily delve quest is literally "go to this delve, bring me 10 heads of your enemies, and kill the boss".
The Undaunted Daily dungeons give you three group dungeons to complete.
The Daily Crafting Writs ask you to craft a certain amount of certain types of items for up to six drafting disciplines.

So, oddly enough, it turns out that most of your suggestions are already in the game.

As for twice an hour defense of a settlement, try playing EP at Chalman, Blue Road Keep, or Drakelowe (I'm sure DC and AD have their equivalent places). I realize the lag in PVP sucks, but if you really want defense, this is where its at.

theslynx · October 2017

VaranisArano wrote: »

Fighters Guild daily asks you to defeat three dolmens in a zone.
Mages Guild daily asked you to get a relic from a public dungeon.
... So, oddly enough, it turns out that most of your suggestions are already in the game.

As for twice an hour defense of a settlement, try playing EP at Chalman, Blue Road Keep, or Drakelowe (I'm sure DC and AD have their equivalent places). I realize the lag in PVP sucks, but if you really want defense, this is where its at.

I think you're missing my larger point. The difference in presentation and context is critical. What I'm imagining is a daily that asks you to just play in a zone, not run to a particular spot in it, then leave. It would both encourage free-form exploration and encompass more options than the current dailies do. Exploration is one of the biggest draws for an Elder Scrolls game, but ESO doesn't do enough to encourage just heading out on a map and wandering about.

For instance, there are 15 Undaunted daily delves. The base game has 90, not including Coldharbour, Craglorn or Cyrodiil. While having some DLC-zones have World Boss dailies is nice, you do those same bosses exclusively. There are 90 base game World Bosses that are not included in any dailies. And so on for the other dailies you mentioned.

Right now, you pick up a specific daily, do the delve, then run to get another daily or do something else that's likely to produce gear, like grinding dungeons. With a zone-specific daily, you do a delve, wander around to find a treasure chest, happen upon a World Boss fight and so on. You have emergent rather than pre-determined gameplay. You get a meaningful daily reward for sampling some of everything rather than being asked to target specific activities in perpetual rotation.

Also, lag in PvP more than sucks from Asia, it simply renders everything comically incoherent.

VaranisArano · October 2017

If you want to wander around in game and have emergent gameplay, you are more than free to do that. Its just that most delves and overland locations already have their own quests that have a place in the faction storylines. Forcing players to group up to do content such as world bosses is already in place in certain DLC zones and in Craglorn with group delves...and even then players can struggle to find a group of players to do the quests with. You are free to add as much exploration to the many dailies in this game as you want - those of us who don't will be happy to get our daily quests over with without additional and unnecessary fuss.

I understand that you want the stuff that is basically in game, just with added immersion and exploration. All I'm going to say further on this is that ESO has vastly improved in that regard from before One Tamriel, where you were railroaded through zones following the questlines. Now, if you want to wander, you are free to wander. Before One Tamriel you could wander, but only within 5 levels of your current level and woe betide if you out-leveled your current quests.

theslynx · October 2017

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you want to wander around in game and have emergent gameplay, you are more than free to do that. Its just that most delves and overland locations already have their own quests that have a place in the faction storylines. Forcing players to group up to do content such as world bosses is already in place in certain DLC zones and in Craglorn with group delves...and even then players can struggle to find a group of players to do the quests with. You are free to add as much exploration to the many dailies in this game as you want - those of us who don't will be happy to get our daily quests over with without additional and unnecessary fuss....

I understand what you're saying and don't want to take away dailies for people whose overarching concern is efficient gains. But I do think that to encourage players who would like the option to do a bit of everything, there should be a meaningful system that gives them rewards so that 'just play' is at least defensible in terms of cost and reward.

I have lost the link I meant to post, but I read a while back Blizzard talking about WoW player behaviour. They found that if they made an activity rewarding, even if few people found it fun, players would do it almost exclusively ad nauseam. They would preference efficient rewards over gameplay they enjoyed where the discrepancy was extreme. Players want to feel rewarded, whether they're casual or hardcore, and it informs gameplay decisions they make. Right now, post-story the game just does not make wandering about and doing random things rewarding, and I think that exhausts a certain segment of ESO players who came hoping for the emergent gameplay and exploration the series had previously supported so strongly. I think a form of course correction by ZoS giving daily rewards to 'go to a map and just do whatever' sort of play would ameliorate the situation and improve retention for casual players. I don't think the current, targeted bounty system does that very well, independent of what improvements One Tamriel brought about.

VaranisArano · October 2017

Honestly, I don't find wandering around Skyrim or Oblivion "post-story" to be very rewarding either. After I've done the all the quests, explored the caves and forts, etc. I'm really just wandering around aimlessly looking for things to kill and chests to loot. That's nothing different from what I can do in ESO "post-story".

If I want to re-experience emergent gameplay and exploring with meaning in Skyrim or Oblivion, I would start a new character and re-experience all the quests, the exploration, and wandering around in a world that still has stories left to be uncovered because I haven't finished them.

theslynx · October 2017

VaranisArano wrote: »

Honestly, I don't find wandering around Skyrim or Oblivion "post-story" to be very rewarding either. After I've done the all the quests, explored the caves and forts, etc. I'm really just wandering around aimlessly looking for things to kill and chests to loot. That's nothing different from what I can do in ESO "post-story".

If I want to re-experience emergent gameplay and exploring with meaning in Skyrim or Oblivion, I would start a new character and re-experience all the quests, the exploration, and wandering around in a world that still has stories left to be uncovered because I haven't finished them.

This is where we diverge as gamers, I guess. I still wander around Skyrim and Fallout's wastelands from time to time. I wandered around Destiny on patrol with friends, doing random bounties and public events for many hours, and got some decent loot from it. In university, friends would sit on the couch taking turns causing destruction in GTA or Saints Row. I'd like to do that in ESO, but it feels like so much is tied into progress I'm not making if I don't do a small handful of activities repeatedly. ESO has so much landmass that it feels criminally underused once you've done the main story.