Group Challenges of Public Dungeons: make them the start of proper combat conditioning for N00bs

Bazeric · November 2017

I still think, out of all my earlier ideas, that it makes sense to change the "Group Challenges" of Public Dungeons to be the same level as normal Group Dungeon Bosses

It would give new/learning players a SUPERDUPER small piece of content to practice group content, on the fly where there are usually other player around, and is better than any World Boss practice since they won't have to deal with wrangling people across an entire zone. The other players might only be a room away. Plus, it is a group challenge that rewards a skill point so it should be as hard as any other content that uses the word "group" and rewards a skill point. i.e. group dungeon quests, which you have to kill a lot more than one boss to get the reward. So it feels like the appropriate interm challenge between EZmode/Normal Dungeon Content

but ultimately they'll never graduate to proper group dungeons because they never learn to be better in combat after all the water that soaked into the content.

Also, maybe a slight boost to EITHER the mobs or bosses in delves, just a little something to get the combat conditioning started.

OG post here, but nobody cares now, so don't waste your time.

I've been soloing normal group dungeons now to finally work on some passives and see if I've missed any good content, and I've had a few thoughts.
(I still don't know the greater intricacies between I and II dungeons, but I think II is slightly more difficult and that's what I am going to base this post on.)

1. I think overland Delves should be scaled to level I normal Group Dungeons. Most people can still solo them, but if not it is an opportunity for Ad-hov grouping to encourage serendipitous social interactions and have players get a better grasp of combat in this game and a greater sense of achievement.

2. I think Public Dungeons should be scaled to level II normal Group Dungeons. Public dungeons are a laugh, I farm them regularly since everything in them is a push over. Even the "Group Challenges" don't need a group and are easier than an easy group dungeon boss. Where is the challenge if I wipe a "group challenge" in 10 secs? I am not even close to a pro PVE build/player.

3. Probably could bump Craglorn up accordingly. I recently farmed skyshards and other thing in the Craglorn delves, don't know why I was nervous. I know it's no longer the "group" map dlc but the delves could benefit from a boost.

I know difficulty is a touchy subject here, since long time players (myself included) often breeze through the content that "New" players struggle with, but we long time players have the experience of learning how to play the game when it was more difficult and had to learn by trail and error. I think these changes would be good to make players really learn about the combat (not so complicated) and help make players group up more, even if it's not an official group just random huddle of people attempting the same content at the same time. Players who struggle at first will be reward with the sense of accomplishment so many of the long time players felt when we learned what worked better or worse.

These are just some quick simple thoughts based on the ease a non-dungeoning player with a crafted set, and overland mash-up, breezed through normal group dungeon content. I didn't bother to tweak my CP. I died maybe once every other dungeon, but that was because I didn't know anything about the fights or I got lazy and didn't notice my food ran out. Some might say, "but you've got all the CPs" and I have, which is certainly why normal group dungeons are easy (the few I've done so far) but it's a lot harder to get special groups going to do special dungeons than it is to /z /y or /s in a delve and see if anyone wants in on the action. There is still plenty of traffic in delves and public dungeons for people to just bundle up for 10 minutes and clean house.

I'm pretty much a solo player so I get that aspect, but if I actually struggled in the regular content more I'd probably be better about teaming up and being more social. Sometimes, if I see a player struggling in a fight, I'll try and give them a little boost, maybe throw them a heal or help knock their enemies down a chunk, things where I don't just wipe things for them but give them a second so that they might learn a little more about the game. PVE certainly shines here if you haven't gotten sick of it from doing it a millions times.

P.S. I can't seem to stop caring about this game, at least not until I can traverse the whole map. So much of Tamriel, untapped.

MLGProPlayer · November 2017

I've previously suggested creating a toggle that scales down your character.

For example, cranking up the game difficulty would scale your gear down to a very low level while disabling CP.

Apache_Kid · November 2017

They aren't going to do anything like this because it would drive off casuals as well as discourage new players.

gabormezo · November 2017

Yeah PG group boss is a joke. 3 seconds for a NB. Dunno what they're thinking.

Jeremy · November 2017

Bazeric wrote: »

I've been soloing normal group dungeons now to finally work on some passives and see if I've missed any good content, and I've had a few thoughts.
(I still don't know the greater intricacies between I and II dungeons, but I think II is slightly more difficult and that's what I am going to base this post on.)

1. I think overland Delves should be scaled to level I normal Group Dungeons. Most people can still solo them, but if not it is an opportunity for Ad-hov grouping to encourage serendipitous social interactions and have players get a better grasp of combat in this game and a greater sense of achievement.

2. I think Public Dungeons should be scaled to level II normal Group Dungeons. Public dungeons are a laugh, I farm them regularly since everything in them is a push over. Even the "Group Challenges" don't need a group and are easier than an easy group dungeon boss. Where is the challenge if I wipe a "group challenge" in 10 secs? I am not even close to a pro PVE build/player.

3. Probably could bump Craglorn up accordingly. I recently farmed skyshards and other thing in the Craglorn delves, don't know why I was nervous. I know it's no longer the "group" map dlc but the delves could benefit from a boost.

I know difficulty is a touchy subject here, since long time players (myself included) often breeze through the content that "New" players struggle with, but we long time players have the experience of learning how to play the game when it was more difficult and had to learn by trail and error. I think these changes would be good to make players really learn about the combat (not so complicated) and help make players group up more, even if it's not an official group just random huddle of people attempting the same content at the same time. Players who struggle at first will be reward with the sense of accomplishment so many of the long time players felt when we learned what worked better or worse.

These are just some quick simple thoughts based on the ease a non-dungeoning player with a crafted set, and overland mash-up, breezed through normal group dungeon content. I didn't bother to tweak my CP. I died maybe once every other dungeon, but that was because I didn't know anything about the fights or I got lazy and didn't notice my food ran out. Some might say, "but you've got all the CPs" and I have, which is certainly why normal group dungeons are easy (the few I've done so far) but it's a lot harder to get special groups going to do special dungeons than it is to /z /y or /s in a delve and see if anyone wants in on the action. There is still plenty of traffic in delves and public dungeons for people to just bundle up for 10 minutes and clean house.

I'm pretty much a solo player so I get that aspect, but if I actually struggled in the regular content more I'd probably be better about teaming up and being more social. Sometimes, if I see a player struggling in a fight, I'll try and give them a little boost, maybe throw them a heal or help knock their enemies down a chunk, things where I don't just wipe things for them but give them a second so that they might learn a little more about the game. PVE certainly shines here if you haven't gotten sick of it from doing it a millions times.

P.S. I can't seem to stop caring about this game, at least not until I can traverse the whole map. So much of Tamriel, untapped.

You almost have to go solo dungeons or world bosses these days to find any kind of interesting challenge while soloing on this game at high levels. So your suggestions to scale at least the delves and public dungeons to normal difficulty dungeons is a good one and I hope they consider them.

Exploring was a lot more fun on this game when it actually required that you pay attention and play decently.

VaranisArano · November 2017

From my experiences leveling new characters with no CP, soloing delves and public dungeons is a lot harder when you have no CP. Balancing sustain, damage, and healing on even a 130k health boss can require a couple tries. Endurance fights with waves of adds? Those can get dicey quickly - and I know how to play the character at low level. With CP? no problems. Without CP, regular boss fights are not that easy.

Now, if you have high DPS and high CP, no, regular overland PVE is not going to be much of a challenge. My stam sorc DPS is currently curbstomping everything in Clockwork City and laughing at any NPC who thinks they can pose a challenge to her. I'm not doing it for the challenge, I'm doing it for the story.

So, in short, your suggestions here would be a great option to have. However, if you are at the point of curbstomping all overland content including group bosses in public dungeons or soloing group dungeons, you are pretty far above the average starting player (or even a returning, experience player who's not using CPs). Making such a difficulty spike optional would benefit you without hurting others. Making such a difficulty spike non-optional would harm new players and players without access to the damage, mitigation, and sustain given by CP.

Doctordarkspawn · November 2017

Bazeric wrote: »

I've been soloing normal group dungeons now to finally work on some passives and see if I've missed any good content, and I've had a few thoughts.
(I still don't know the greater intricacies between I and II dungeons, but I think II is slightly more difficult and that's what I am going to base this post on.)

1. I think overland Delves should be scaled to level I normal Group Dungeons. Most people can still solo them, but if not it is an opportunity for Ad-hov grouping to encourage serendipitous social interactions and have players get a better grasp of combat in this game and a greater sense of achievement.

2. I think Public Dungeons should be scaled to level II normal Group Dungeons. Public dungeons are a laugh, I farm them regularly since everything in them is a push over. Even the "Group Challenges" don't need a group and are easier than an easy group dungeon boss. Where is the challenge if I wipe a "group challenge" in 10 secs? I am not even close to a pro PVE build/player.

3. Probably could bump Craglorn up accordingly. I recently farmed skyshards and other thing in the Craglorn delves, don't know why I was nervous. I know it's no longer the "group" map dlc but the delves could benefit from a boost.

I know difficulty is a touchy subject here, since long time players (myself included) often breeze through the content that "New" players struggle with, but we long time players have the experience of learning how to play the game when it was more difficult and had to learn by trail and error. I think these changes would be good to make players really learn about the combat (not so complicated) and help make players group up more, even if it's not an official group just random huddle of people attempting the same content at the same time. Players who struggle at first will be reward with the sense of accomplishment so many of the long time players felt when we learned what worked better or worse.

These are just some quick simple thoughts based on the ease a non-dungeoning player with a crafted set, and overland mash-up, breezed through normal group dungeon content. I didn't bother to tweak my CP. I died maybe once every other dungeon, but that was because I didn't know anything about the fights or I got lazy and didn't notice my food ran out. Some might say, "but you've got all the CPs" and I have, which is certainly why normal group dungeons are easy (the few I've done so far) but it's a lot harder to get special groups going to do special dungeons than it is to /z /y or /s in a delve and see if anyone wants in on the action. There is still plenty of traffic in delves and public dungeons for people to just bundle up for 10 minutes and clean house.

I'm pretty much a solo player so I get that aspect, but if I actually struggled in the regular content more I'd probably be better about teaming up and being more social. Sometimes, if I see a player struggling in a fight, I'll try and give them a little boost, maybe throw them a heal or help knock their enemies down a chunk, things where I don't just wipe things for them but give them a second so that they might learn a little more about the game. PVE certainly shines here if you haven't gotten sick of it from doing it a millions times.

P.S. I can't seem to stop caring about this game, at least not until I can traverse the whole map. So much of Tamriel, untapped.

1. No. Lets not ruin the rest of the game for your prefrence. If any of this is non negotiable with sliders, then you will drive away most of the casual lifeblood still keeping this game alive.

2. Public dungeons are like the overland content, your never gonna do these over. I remember when these things required grouping. They were just never done. Sorry, driving players away from the content for your prefrence isn't the answer.

3. If anything, Craglorn needs to just become a repeatable Solo zone at overland difficulty and get it over with, because that's what people want. They tried to make it a group zone and it was litterally a ghost town within weeks. They turned it down to get people -there-, and even then only half the people are coming.

When will you learn your actions have consequences? Keep to your side of the room. Stop being greedy.

P.S: This is the single MMO with the most issues teaching it's players through gameplay. The game isn't good enough on this front to have difficult content make the playerbase stronger. You would need to adress those issues before these, and since most people bite the heads off of those who try, they'll never be adressed.

I still see people queue for dungeons with full CP with the worst builds possible because of how bad this game is at -teaching- people how to play through design. Expecting people to research a game they play for fun in order to play correctly is unrealistic and unreasonable.

Forcing the difficulty up will only drive people away, not make them better. You think people will become stronger through hitting a wall, but this isn't allways the case. Some just break, or give up. And right now, when the game is consistantly bad at pleasing the endgame populace, we need these people to stay.

Think of someone other than yourself for once.

Bazeric · November 2017

Jeremy wrote: »

Exploring was a lot more fun on this game when it actually required that you pay attention and play decently.

I feel you, kind of had that feeling again in these dungeons. Trouble is we now have a lot of experience playing this game and there is only so many thing they can add to shake up that we haven't seen in the regular content. I was really excited when the mobs in CWC hit me with that new tackle, a little spin on plain mobs to add the next layer of difficulty.

VaranisArano wrote: »

From my experiences leveling new characters with no CP, soloing delves and public dungeons is a lot harder when you have no CP. Balancing sustain, damage, and healing on even a 130k health boss can require a couple tries. Endurance fights with waves of adds? Those can get dicey quickly - and I know how to play the character at low level. With CP? no problems. Without CP, regular boss fights are not that easy.

Recently did the same thing, no CP, only changed my armor every 10 levels, mostly green. Unless you try leveling up in some of the DLC zones, the mobs really don't offer much, and the bosses were more challenging, but I think it'd be fine to bump them some, but it seems my faith lies in the ad-hoc, random bunches of people joining together for a common cause than the holy casuals who everyone claims prefers zero challenge at all and will be around longer than anyone who cares to invest the slightest in learning a thing or two about the combat. maybe there is a compromise, buff plain mobs or bosses.

ArchMikem · November 2017

Sorry to say but I agree with those disagreeing above me. You hear the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"? Your ideas have merit and I know for certain you have good intentions behind it, you don't want the game being just a giant push over. But realize, you're seeing the game through your eyes, not everyone elses. You have the gear, and the CP, and the experience to make the content a push over when a lot of other players just don't. I've seen quite a few people just get wrecked by trash mobs that I being my 690CP end-game armor sets self would easily down with two or three taps of a button.

Just because I think overland content should be a bit harder so I don't feel like much of a bulldozer doesn't mean I should make it even more inaccessible to everyone else below me. They have every right to experience content that I do, and just making it harder just means people will be unable to progress through it, much less complete.

Bazeric · November 2017

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

1. No. Lets not ruin the rest of the game for your prefrence. If any of this is non negotiable with sliders, then you will drive away most of the casual lifeblood still keeping this game alive.

I'm not ruining anything, just thoughts I shared, the only thing ZOS ever listened to me about is when I found Soul Harvest was using physical pen and Incap was using spell pen like a year ago. Casual lifeblood? Maybe, maybe not. Casual could get bored when they have no reason to play and get better? Half the arguments are for character progression i.e. CP, the other for casual whales i.e. crown crates.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

2. Public dungeons are like the overland content, your never gonna do these over. I remember when these things required grouping. They were just never done. Sorry, driving players away from the content for your prefrence isn't the answer.

They weren't incentivized then, I grind them for sets, gold, exp, event skulls, etc. So we'll never know for sure here.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

3. If anything, Craglorn needs to just become a repeatable Solo zone at overland difficulty and get it over with, because that's what people want. They tried to make it a group zone and it was litterally a ghost town within weeks. They turned it down to get people -there-, and even then only half the people are coming.

I think the zone is nice now, just pointing towards delves here. But the only reason to go to any zone at this point is for quest you haven't done, so maybe they need to have certain world events that spawn in zones. That's a whole different thing though.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

When will you learn your actions have consequences? Keep to your side of the room. Stop being greedy.

I don't see what this is aimed at so I'll just assume it is irrelevant.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

P.S: This is the single MMO with the most issues teaching it's players through gameplay. The game isn't good enough on this front to have difficult content make the playerbase stronger. You would need to adress those issues before these, and since most people bite the heads off of those who try, they'll never be adressed.

Sounds like a pretty divisive community. I've not seen so much of that. But if I read this right, maybe better tutorials, subtle or explicit? Showing/telling.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

I still see people queue for dungeons with full CP with the worst builds possible because of how bad this game is at -teaching- people how to play through design. Expecting people to research a game they play for fun in order to play correctly is unrealistic and unreasonable.

This sounds closer to an argument for increasing the main game difficult, that way people don't just breeze their way to max CP without learning how to fight.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Forcing the difficulty up will only drive people away, not make them better. You think people will become stronger through hitting a wall, but this isn't allways the case. Some just break, or give up. And right now, when the game is consistantly bad at pleasing the endgame populace, we need these people to stay.

We can't really say, unless ZOS comes out and says, "We are going to focus on retaining the current player base" or "We are planning our business on getting as many new players a possible each quarter until the game fails" The rest is us just speculating, which this is a forum so why not?

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Think of someone other than yourself for once.

[/quote]

I have, it just differing opinions about what's right for them, which honestly there is no "right" answer, but we can come to the forums and discuss them and ultimately ZOS will ignore them and we'll go on with our miserable lives like we do every day.... I guess. But if you need somebody to hate, have at. Again I was just sharing my thoughts, and I am fairly certain I am one step away from a ZOS blacklist anyway so you don't get so worked up over me.

Bazeric · November 2017

ArchMikem wrote: »

Sorry to say but I agree with those disagreeing above me. You hear the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions"? Your ideas have merit and I know for certain you have good intentions behind it, you don't want the game being just a giant push over. But realize, you're seeing the game through your eyes, not everyone elses. You have the gear, and the CP, and the experience to make the content a push over when a lot of other players just don't. I've seen quite a few people just get wrecked by trash mobs that I being my 690CP end-game armor sets self would easily down with two or three taps of a button.

Just because I think overland content should be a bit harder so I don't feel like much of a bulldozer doesn't mean I should make it even more inaccessible to everyone else below me. They have every right to experience content that I do, and just making it harder just means people will be unable to progress through it, much less complete.

I do realize I am seeing things through the eyes of (a lot of) experience in the game. I have started new characters and not invested any CP so I've tried to gauge what it's like at that level. I am not advocating changing all overland content, just the delves and public dungeons. It would be nice for the little torch icons on the map to be an exciting adventure every time. It feels like the idea behind them should be like super quick dungeons, one or two bosses in most cases and something to get excited to work up to, since it is still easier to roam around and pop into delves than it is to get a real group ready for a proper dungeon. Even new players will become proficient after completing at the first zone delves, since all the original delves are really just the same 5 or 6 styles with different art.

The feed back so far is that even this is still too much, but I could still go for a slight boost to delve mobs or bosses, but Public Dungeons should absolutely be boosted, and certainly the "group challenges" making group challenges like actual group dungeon bosses is a good way for new players to get experience in these kinds of fights.

ADarklore · November 2017

I have to add to the disagreement list; I still see players dying every time I play in open world content including delves. Interesting how experienced ESO players seem to think the game is so easy, but as someone who creates new characters regularly, I see enough players dying to know that this game is not 'easy' for everyone.

Public Dungeons are designed for... the PUBLIC... this means one player or multiple. Thus, one player if fairly experienced and with decent gear, should be able to complete it... but it should not be, in any way, close to a GROUP dungeon where difficulty is designed for a group.

I honestly was very unhappy how they handled World Bosses... I used to enjoy soloing them, but since the change in OT, I haven't been able to solo a single World Boss and I've been playing this game for almost three years now and have excellent gear. Some people think soloing a WB is easy, but for me it's been impossible... so it just goes to show that two people looking at the same piece of content have two different viewpoints and experiences.

kringled_1 · November 2017

A small boost in difficulty, sure, but what OP suggests is I think well beyond what is reasonable for most of this content. This is stuff I do when I'm on my own, and stuff I can do solo is what kept me going in this game for a long while after the group I initially started playing with mostly quit. I often see people asking for help with WB's for quite a while in zone chat, and equally so for the Craglorn group quests. It seems tougher to get interested groups together for that kind of stuff and it would just not get done.
Public dungeon group events - in and of themselves (and maybe this is appropriate for the ones in Vvardenfell and Wrothgar) closer to a group dungeon boss doesn't seem unreasonable. But if you do that to the base game public dungeons, you'll pretty much kill Mage's guild dailies, as they are always set in the vicinity of the group event and many group events are triggered just by clearing out the smaller mobs that you would need to clear to get to the daily quest objective.

Bazeric · November 2017

kringled_1 wrote: »

the group I initially started playing with mostly quit.

Bummer. Was it more that they got bored of the game: no new content to breeze through, or that they hit a wall and couldn't progress: Normal Group Dungeons were too hard with 4 people?

Anyway I've changed the post now.

Make "Group Challenges" like real group bosses, after all they reward a skill point and I think are better located than WBs which can be a pain to wrangle drifters for. Seems like a good place for practice to me...

Maryal · November 2017

Not everyone wants to group with other people just to complete content. One of the nice things about this game is that your not restricted to topside 'vanilla' content if you want to solo.

Some people want content that allows them to learn and fine-tune higher and higher levels of skill mastery ... and this means having content that scales appropriately in terms of difficulty progression for a soloist. The current difficulty of public dungeons is part of that content progression (content done without using proc sets and without relying on others (no grouping)); if you change the difficulty of public dungeons, you end up with a huge content gap in regards thereto.

Dungeon bosses progress in difficulty (public --> 4-man normal --> 4-man vet, etc). Hypothetically, if you did change the difficulty of public dungeon bosses to that of normal 4-man dungeons, then what do we do with normal 4-man dungeon bosses ... increase their difficulty to that of vet mode? Then what do we do with vet mode 4-man dungeon bosses ... increase their difficulty to that of trial bosses?

While I admire the OP's intent and agree with them in principle, the OP's proposed solution would ultimately do more harm than good, IMO.