First I would like to say this is one of the best MMO’s I have played and that is comparing it to SWTOR, Rift, LOTR, WOW, and GW2. I believe the story lines are spot on and hold a high entertainment value as well as a quality that keeps you wanting to interact more. I do wish each race would have had their own separate story in the game along with their faction storyline but I get it, cost had to have been considered there. The crafting system to this day is still a way of making quality sets that are usable at the top levels, and they have kept up with being a money maker. I was never a person that cared much about dyes in game; however, I have taken a strong interest in your dye system and clearly a lot of quality conversations went on when creating it because I use it on every character (toon).
The downside I have felt from day one is the guild system and/or lack of auction house. I completely get it and have come around to accept that there is never going to be an auction house in ESO. I do agree it keeps items from becoming worth so little by the constant under cutting by a million people; however, the downside of what has been created has caused its own problems as well. We come from playing together since the start of SWTOR in 2011. We brought with us a group of around 30 people and we even bought the game for a few just so they could play with us still. We had been together a long time prior to ESO and unfortunately due to the 5 guild systems and the lack of a way to sell things in the beginning people started to leave. Let me be more specific so you don’t misunderstand.
The 5 guild system meant we had to join other guilds if we wanted to be crafters and market our products and/or sell in chat all day. It also meant we spent hours looking for specific items and searching the internet to learn where to farm these items. In other words we spent a long amount of time doing things that had very little to playing or enjoying the game. Then on top of it we thought this problem would be fixed by the guild kiosk system. Problem was we quickly found out the price of the kiosk were on the high side to maintain, which meant we could either fall in the trap of being a trading guild or being a raiding guild. While in the beginning we choose to be a raiding guild because that’s what we had always done, we added members and had a full guild the majority of the time. We set up a paid website (even marketed it to stay listed on the top of google for a time), continued to use our voice chat, and set up raids, WB public dungeon and dark Anker days, as well as dabbled in PVP(which I thought was amazing and I hate PVP). This is when we found guild loyalty like in other games was down the drain. Many people would come and go to open up their ability to sell items rather than running dungeons and other content,
Even when we put groups together daily it was often easier to grab people out of chat than keeping a solid team together for trials. So eventually we wore down and found we were spending so much time recruiting all the time and having people come and go it was just going to be easier to be a trading guild and forget what we enjoyed in other MMO’s. Keeping 500 members in the trading guild was easy, what became difficult quickly was keeping the guild kiosk at an affordable price. So as with every trading guild I am in today, the weekly choirs became a full time job. You spend all week trying to raise enough money to make sure you can keep your kiosk, raffles, auctions, sales, donations etc. Then once you get your bid, you get one day to play the game and it starts all over again. What happened to the fun of gaming, right? Finally our original 30 started to disappear(from the game not the guild), any week we lost a trader people left, people joined when we got it back so no big deal.
Now I realize people come and go from every game (so swat the guy who is reading this and going duh it happens). Keep in mind we were a group that played together for all these years so leaving the guild was never an option, and conquering content was always our goal. After doing this for weeks, it clearly became the hardest game to maintain and took more time than any of the previous MMO’s we had a guild in. We went by Aftermath, and I feel that this feedback is now the aftermath of what has happened; however, I believe I have found some solutions that don’t change your economy or get rid of anything you worked so hard to create.
` Eventually we all left the game, I have returned with my childhood friend multiple times, and we are avid subscribers, I despise free to play in an MMO and found by you guys offering the craft bag and other features for subscribers we will gladly stay subs. Every time it is the same we remember how much we love playing the game, then we start to remember why we left. We decided not to run a guild anymore so we can just focus on the fun parts. Quickly though we find there is almost 0 guilds that can stay active unless they have a kiosk and group content is almost always formed through general chat making somethings very trying at times to say it politely.
The trading guilds keep full with a constant kiosk and often someone tries to put groups together with good and bad results. The problem then becomes Tuesday the emails start we need donations, we need raffle tickets purchased etc. you get the point I’m sure. These guys will get burnt out in time, and or get so overly involved the drama will start. For guys like me I donate to the raffle and sell over 100k a week per guild; however, it gets very old getting emails people are going to get kicked, we need more participation, please donate etc. I do realize I have met or exceeded my guilds requirements each week and these emails are meant for the others; however, I also realize the stress they are under and that they don’t get to play the game on their free time, it is now a job, and I feel bad for them, and frustrated that a great game like this is causing people to leave because of huge short coming, when it is a great MMO. I can already see my BFF( as they are called) working towards a new game. He is constantly having me check out New MMO’s and we both read a lot to see what is on the horizon, in hopes we find one that allows us to build a new group of friends and be able to play and joke around all the time like we have in other MMO’s.
My solutions
The first thing I had considered was how to solve the solution of trader kiosk and the constant job the leaders have to do and the constant emails we get. So what I come up with was more of a Kiosk reward system. If you win your kiosk say for 3 wks in a row, it’s yours for the next month, taxes and fees would still apply. Say offer one week free, this allows them to build up gold for the week, and then the kiosk would be bought for 3 weeks at the price they won their bid at. At the end of the month it would go back up for bid for 2 wks. If the same guild won both weeks, then again another week free and 3 wks at bid cost. If they hold the kiosk for a year they then have that spot turn permanent unless they can’t afford the bid fee giving one free week per month. Now if they lose their bid or can’t pay the bid fee they would lose their spot and have to start fresh. Then you’re building guild loyalty by its members who love the spot and want to keep being part of the same guild. It also makes it feel like these donations are working towards a common goal. It doesn’t change your economy and gives a common goal to the same group of guys with a huge reward at the end of the year. Hard work pays off and I’m not leaving a game that I got to know people and a game that has such amazing content. Plus now the weekly emails don’t seem like this is going to be endless.
Next this will need some tweaking but here me out.
Big problem as I said was running with the same group of guys, hard to do that when all anyone wants is a trading guild these days. So here’s what I suggest set up a guild system that limits the amount of players it can have by the type of guild. Then setup guild leader boards with top players under a specific guild they represent. For example I want to set up a PVE guild for trials, and all other PVE stuff, my guild is limited to 100 members. When we complete things as a group our guild gets posted to the board along with members who were involved specs like dps/heals/tank, race, werewolf/vampire, food, drinks used and maybe the top dps/hps/agro/blocks/interrupts/synegy activated during each boss fight. This gets everyone together that wants to work for a common goal and keeps the same people to master each area. You can keep stats for trials, dwelves, public dungeons, etc. you get the picture. I know someone is saying hold up that too much on the servers. For trials you already have a leaderboard all your adding is a guild name. Allow the players to add which pots they use and stuff like that, the more interaction they have with it the more they will pay attention to it. I’m sure someone can make an addon that keeps track of it and autofills out the slots you allow to be filled in by the players. For smaller stuff like delves, WB, and PD, keep it to a small list of like 15-30 guilds no more, this will save space. What would be even better is if their toon could be posted next to their name. God knows there is enough achievements in the game to me busy for years already but nothing that I can show off without me showing off. If everyone see’s it, players will try and copy, modify and compete to improve their builds. You can do something very similar with a PVP guild that has say 200 members, and don’t allow PVE guilds to get posted for PVP content and vice versa. Now I am apart of 3 guilds that make sense. I would personally increase the trading guilds size to 1k. So 3 traders and 2 content guilds that I want to be a part of and interact with. The final thing I recommend for the guilds is a recruitment board with maybe a little knowledge and apply for members option for the guilds. This saves spamming chat, allows members to connect with guild leaders that may not be online during the time they play and so many others. The guilds can post raid hours, requirements, activities, and specific spec they are looking for.
Clearly, everyone always want’s more and you guys have kept to your word from day one and added new content so fast, I can’t even keep up. It is a nice complaint to have and one I would not want to change. I realize we cannot bring back our old guild and most of them guys will probably never start the game again. That said there is a few minor changes that I believe should be made to slow down the number of people that leave the game due the frustrations of it. One of my thoughts is every MMO (yes I realize this isn’t every MMO) has a repair guy you can purchase and pull out anytime you’re playing. I really thought that when I see that you added a personal merchant it would have it. I would have been so pissed if I would have purchased it and found out it is the only merchant in the game that doesn’t repair. I do realize if you do dailies you get repair boxes that can be used on a specific piece of gear; however, what good does that do anyone on a timed run, and it then becomes another thing I have to do to earn or I purchase them and the market then dictates repair cost. Now a repair all option added to the boxes would work; however, that still leaves the problems of having to purchases them at a market dictated price, one could easily lose interest as prices go up.
My final thought is to crafting, I have greatly enjoyed crafting and the fact that I can have one toon craft everything is a huge bonus to me. That leaves me the option to do the same with my other toons after I have everything else I want as far with my skill points. I know the great debate about jewelry crafting has been going on since day one; however, I am proposing adding it over the years and not all at once. My original thought was to add the ability to upgrade a ring from green to gold; however, an upgraded ring would then become bound. Later you could add the ability to transmute it, and then add the ability to maybe change it from Brenton to daedra. Until the day they can be crafted if ever. Please keep in mind when anything is done in the game it is better to add than to subtract. For example rather than nerfing a move, buff the other toons with a slight defense to it so people feel like they got something rather than lost something and want to leave the game over it. I have seen a lot of guys say they have no fun playing their toon since it got nerfed and end up playing another game. The game speaks for itself when it comes to quality, its all about how long does it take and how much time do I have. In my case, I am disabled and have a lot of time, although I can only sit for a little while at a time and have to leave the game frequently. I have a whole routine of icing my back and neck just so I can play for two more hours, I bought a new chair, new MMO mouse, and seat cushions that I rotate to get two hours of solid game time. Often times by the time I do the dailies and collect my hirelings it is almost time to jump off until the pain goes away. If I do that what are other’s doing to play your game. You guys have done a great job, the things that are missing, unfortunately, are what others are getting fed up with and the reason they take extended or permanent breaks. I realize people will come and go but it should not be excepted it should be what is changed, rather than micromanaging 1 players complaint look at the game as whole to determine what an MMO is and what it needs to be complete. Then micromanage lol.
Sincerely,
@Vanguard.1
PS I think you should release the plain Vanguard name to me so I can be just Vanguard, let’s face I’m always the first one in.