xaraan wrote: »

So if you ask me, I'll just have the 'old-timer' response of "back in my day" to whatever your new fangled ideas to make your journey easier than mine.

I do not think people should get max level characters, or all the shards or all the mage books automatically.

But tbh, threads like these just smack of people wanting things handed to them and not wanting to put the work in they've seen their neighbor doing. You want the stuff, then do it.

I thoroughly agree here. I've been playing MMOs for over 20 years and have watched RPGs and leveling devolve from personal commitments to cheat code level skips. RPGs by their nature involve characters and their personal story and progress and these "forsayers" prefer to constantly throw the onus onto others without realizing that they're the ones asking for shortcuts and level skip codes to have an assortment of max level every class and spec characters like this were Overwatch.

But as previously mentioned, it's a moot point since these elements are the lifeblood of MMOs that will only ever be curtailed through the use of the cash shop. Had the devs wanted you to be able to access everything account wide, it would have been. FFXIV has a single character that can swap between classes freely, you still have to level separately though. Crowfall is introducing a similar soul swap system so it's not like games don't exist that people are welcome to try if they dislike "tedium". What some call tedium, others call the content, and Zenimax is firmly in the content pool. Their server population, living world, and subscriptions depend on players repeating content because they can't put it out as fast as these powergamers consume it.

Because lest we forget, if you're only interested in maxing out a character for end game stuff, you're powergaming.

DoctorESO wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Less than a year's playtime if you play 4 hours a day on average

Uh...some of us have lives outside of ESO and can't devote this kind of time to the game, which everyone keeps calling "casual friendly."

@DoctorESO , again, that's for 14, count 'em ~ one four ~ fully maxed characters, which a "casual friendly" is probably not going to be worried about.

I say four hour a day average, because I suspect most play more on weekends or days off, so the less you play during the week gets compensated for and averages out.

Point being, still 100 in game hours per character, so based on your own pace you can determine how many days it will take to get there.

Simply put, some of the numbers are far exaggerated as to how difficult it is to get where you need to be. Heck, where you need to be itself, is being exaggerated.

It doesn't take 3 months to get Undaunted 9. It doesn't take months to get skyshards/lorebooks enough to be functional in game for most content. Well, perhaps it does if you play rarely and little - how many in game hours does that translate to? Because that's the only way people that play different amounts will have a common baseline.

It doesn't take a truly maxed out, min/max'd leaderboard capable character to do most anything in this game.

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Regarding lorebooks and skyshards, it's not like the location changes and you literally have to find them on every character.

Actually, you do have to find them. You have no wayshrines unlocked, and if you're on console, you have no add-ons to help you.

Except you don't... You're confusing collection with location. They. Don't. Move. If you've found them once, and noted the location, you already know where you're going. You can travel to friends to unlock wayshrines, you can sprint on foot (faster than your initial horse) to unlock the odd ones in between. I'm also pretty sure you console types have internet.

There is purchasable gear that can speed up your character. At level 10, you're handed the skillpoint for Rapids simply by arriving in Cyrodiil and speaking with two NPC's, skipping the tutorial entirely - there's a 30% speed boost for your mount...at level 10.

The question I never see answered in threads like this is What is a reasonable in-game-hours number to attain the level you're after? 10 hours? 50? No one ever specifies where they think it should be.

I gave a range. A range I can happily back up with picture proof to show what some are saying simply isn't correct.

So what'll it be? How many hours is an end-game character worth to the crowd here? What is the reasonable grey area between having to 'hard core' and having it handed to you?

BTW: Your Vamp leveling projection is also incorrect, as it works of XP and will level automatically, even if you don't have a single vamp skill on your bar. The only required repetition is the bite itself and the very short quest involving listening to some dialogue, defiling two altars, and killing 10 easy to kill adds.

If you're pursuing it as a casual, pursue it as a casual. Why do you even care how long it takes? Isn't that what casual means?

DoctorESO wrote: »

Competitive vet trials involves min-maxing your character, which in turn involves the above items. For your normal trials, no, you don't need everything, but you still need some of the above, like orbs for healers.

And here it is again. Competitive play rears its head in an attempt to change the game to fit its own agenda.

Here's another possible solution: Create an Endgame megaserver.

• All accounts would be eligible once they hit CP 1
• A transfer to the endgame server would then allow you to clone the status of your highest level character when creating new ones.
• Any character created in this way on the endgame megaserver could not be migrated back to any of the usual servers.
• All future balance changes based on competitive content feedback could then be applied to this megaserver alone.

This would concentrate the endgame population in one place (rather than NA and EU) and allow for easier group finding and (possibly) less lag, it would allow for character creation purely for endgame purposes. More "time-saving" systems could be implemented for endgame players. It would also shift the rebalancing efforts of ZOS away from the newbie population.

How does that sound?

DoctorESO wrote: »

Someone did this calculation in another thread about motifs, so I will do it here.

As someone mentioned, if you play for 4 hours per day for a year just to level up your alts and do the skyshards, lorebooks, etc., that's 365 x 4 = 1,460 hours.

Using the U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour, that comes out to $10,585.

Using the U.S. Washington state minimum wage of $15/hour for companies with 500+ employees, that comes out to $21,900.

The calculation was done in this and the other thread about motifs just to put the amount of time spent into perspective.

@Merlin13KAGL, you and I must have different definitions of "find" with respect to unlocking the 230 wayshrines. No one knows where they are by heart. And if even if they did, the character itself does not know where they are and does indeed have to "find" them to unlock them on the map and for use. Wayshrines are not usable until one's character finds them. This would not be the case if there was an account-wide unlock option (option, so people who want to re-find them are not harmed), because they would already be "found" upon character creation.

Interesting yet completely out of perspective way of comparing it. Also, as I mentioned, that's for a full roster of characters.

It's also an unrealistic comparison in that it's a hobby - a game. You can equally compare the 'opportunity cost' of the TV or Netflix you watch, or how quickly you prepare your lunch...You're saving 12 cents for every minute you can shave off that ham & swiss preparation.

It's also, not a job, nor is it remotely close in difficulty to even the most basic job. Your electricity doesn't get shut off if you don't level your alt fast enough. It's like the quick comparisons that say a husband/wife/mother/father's "salary worth" is 100k + because they do 5 minutes of this job, and 5 minutes of that job. It doesn't account for the overlap.

If you're going to compare it that way, I'd compare it to training or taking classes for a new skill. At the end of it you've got 14 different skills to choose from, and consider, per your example, that after that $10-20k paid out...you'd rarely have to work ever again, because you would have already obtained 99% of what you needed at that point. (Please tell me where to find that job, because I'll apply in a heartbeat.)

I mean, good god man, I hate to think how much $$$$ I've lost posting on the forums. Do you realize you also lose $10-20k a year by sleeping? Do you see why the comparison doesn't quite work?

Please explain to me why you need to find every wayshrine, or why you need to access every quest in the game? The game does not require completion for the ability to do content.
You can get where you need to be without having completed even 50% of the game.

And I've still not heard an answer as to how many hours, or in translation, what $ amount, is reasonable to have a single additional end game character?

Facefister wrote: »

No matter how fast or slow you're going to play, maximizing riding skill without Crown shop items takes atleast 150 days.

Correct, except you don't need the 60 extra inventory slots. They're nice, but they're not going to prevent you from running vAA, doing a four-man dungeon, a battleground, or even pushing for Emp.

Facefister wrote: »

If riding skill has nothing to do with character development, why isn't it account wide?

Because ZOS makes money off selling the riding lessons from the crown store and even convinces subscribers to part with their free monthly crowns to speed up an alt. Money trumps all other priorities.

In fact riding lessons used to be per mount instead of per character. The only reason they changed this is because no one wanted to buy their new mounts in the Crown store because they would come untrained. They changed it because it made them MORE money to do so.

Follow the Benjamins.

Facefister wrote: »

I know that they don't do it because of money. I am trying to put on some "consumer" perspective and from this perspective I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be account wide.

Why would you use a consumer perspective when ZOS isn't a consumer? You can't use your own point of view when wondering why someone else doesn't do something that only benefits you. Look at it from a business perspective.

For what reason should it be account wide that a businessman would agree with?

Facefister wrote: »

All those wouldn't have any impact on gameplay nor balance. They're purely cosmetic, and from a businessmans perspective, long overdue.

Not quite, your perspective is one of greed, not of business. It was attempted multiple times in MMO history and if you knew the background of the genre you wouldn't think like that. The craft bag is an incentive for ESO plus, often toted as the primary reason people even get it, and the incentive needs to carry the worth of assigning a subscription to the account. More incentive, more subscriptions, yet they can't over do it either because that leads into the problem with your other suggestions. Pay to win is a real concern among gamers, especially when ESO launched, and developers have to be careful about what they add to the crown store because it can easily set off the spark that loses them their playerbase AS IT HAS DONE IN MULTIPLE GAMES BEFORE!

As a consumer you don't benefit from the businessman's perspective and yet no one at ZOS cares about what benefits you. You are welcome to simply walk away from the game if you feel it doesn't benefit you to stay. ZOS's responsibility is provide just enough to incentivize you to remain, not to cater to your every hope and dream or to make your stay as pleasant as possible. They're not crafting a work of art that will someday be housed in the Smithsonian as one of the marvels of the world. They're putting out a minimum viable product that brings in the maximum amount of dollars, which they know from all the other games that Zenimax owns and all the tweaking they've done to the business model over the literal years the game has existed to see what generates more or less income. This game used to have a MANDATORY subscription that they dropped as businessmen because it was costing them clients and income when making the game buy-to-play brought in more revenue that actually saved the game from collapse.

It's challenging to understand the mindset of a businessman sometimes without knowing everything they're aware of or the history of their industry and its failures. But what benefits the consumer is never on the table or under consideration. Only what won't get enough of the consumers not to quit and to spend absurd amounts of money making up the difference in comfort luxuries.

I started my PC account mid August. I now have 8 level 50s and 600 CP. Of those 8 I'd take 5 to a vet trial quite happily. The other 3 I haven't wanted to put time into.

Undaunted isn't that bad, just run vet pledges each day. That nets you skill points, XP, fighters guild and even some mage guild.

Fighters guild is maxed by the time you're 50 anyway due to the grind.

Mage guild plus overland skyshards (i.e not delves) will take maybe 4 hours. Using rapids, doing it after you're 50 with your end game gear, travelling via guild members etc its not bad at all.

You don't need many additional skill points. Do all the public dungeons, group dungeons and overland skyshards in the zones where you get your lorebooks. That's plenty unless you're a tank, healer or crafter.

Mounts only matter in Cyro, most of my toons simply don't do any overland stuff. Even the spend 30 days on just speed training and you'll br fine.

Maxing skill lines in training gear and xp pots is also fairly fast.

Facefister wrote: »

You base your entire walls of texts that people buy those crown store riding skills. How can you be sure, without having any numbers, that people buy those and just don't play their alts?

No, not just the riding skills, the subscriptions as well. How do we know? PLAYERS ADMIT TO IT when these horse riding topics come up. It's one of the most frequently purchased items from the Crown store for subscribers since they don't need DLC and it helps them level their characters faster. We also know because ZOS ADMITS IT by telling us that horse training and XP pots are the two most sold items from their store.

How about instead of challenging everything that someone who's been here for literal years tries to inform you of for the benefit of keeping the topic productive instead of yet another horse-beating one, you simply understand that I have more experience with this topic than you and have been privy to knowledge you haven't even bothered to research? You're coming to a discussion completely uninformed and attacking the informed poster for making sense.

DoctorESO wrote: »

Since no one has ventured forth to answer the new question you posited, I will take the opening shot. How many hours is reasonable to have a single end-game alt, assuming you have already completed all the content on your main? I will start by saying 8-12 hours plus however long it takes to get the best-in-slot gear currently.

The problem with that is that most (myself included) have not come close to completing all content on their main. The other problem lays in how that is measured.

Is that ever last side quest, all achievements (monster trophies by themselves are gonna take far longer than leveling an alt would), dungeons, PvP ranks?

Here's a half way point I would suggest:

• Take the average of all current alts' completions on the items that cause you the most temporal grief. Skyshards, riding lessons, Guild rep, etc.
• Give newly created alts a percentage of that average, with that percentage increasing (2-10%) for each alt you currently have.
• Optionally, you could even throw in a quest to be performed, at the end of which, you get to choose one of the items to get a higher bonus completion (similar to what you suggested earlier).

This would give alts a head start, but not a full completion.
This would police itself and not be exploitable because if you simple made 6 more alts with zero skyshards, zero guild rep, etc, you'd only lower what your 8th alt would receive because you'd only be effectively lowering your total average.

In this way, it would get easier the more alts you had, as you went, while still requiring some time investment.

What do you think of that option?