Apache_Kid wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Apache_Kid wrote: »

Asking for normal DLC dungeons to be made easier is honestly an absurd request. The one-shots don't even really one-shot you just leave you with a little bit of health. I've only ran them on normal as opposed to vet a couple times and I was running falkreath on normal for the first time a couple days ago for a skill point on a random character and I was amazed as i watched my pugs stand right out in the open during a Domihaus shout and live through it. You don't even have to obey the mechanics.

As far as those of you saying that there is no demand for dungeon DLCs you are dead wrong. Some people like myself enjoy the dungeon DLCs more than any other DLC. If you actually go for the achievements they offer much more playtime than some crappy little zone like Hews Bane or the Clockwork city where I could finish all the quests and delves in a day or two. Have been going at the wolfhunter dungeons almost every night for a couple hours since they came out on Xbox NA and all we need is MoS HM and we have had a blast getting the rest of the achievements. Some story DLC zone i would've had 100% complete in the first week. Not as much value.

Dungeon DLCs are nice because they provide content for end-game players without having to put up with the hassle of organizing 11 others for the activity. There needs to be something for players who want a challenge but dont have the time to commit to a core raid team. And you know what's great about these dungeon DLCs? Any one of you who says they don't like them because they are too difficult, all you have to do is get better and find some friends and you can enjoy them like the rest of us and earn cool achievements. There is no gate except the one of your own skill that you put there yourself. Never stop wanting to improve.

This is the type of "gotta pull yourself up by those bootstraps, git gud kid" answer that I was expecting to see, and have seen a lot in this thread.

1) Your example with Falkreath is a bad one. Domihaus is probably the least challenging boss in there, for the reason you just outlined. The spectre / bone golem boss, on the other hand, is far more challenging and causes groups to disband far more often, I assure you.

2) You even say it yourself: "some people". Many, many more people do not enjoy this system. You're part of the vocal minority that the devs listen to, unfortunately.

3) It's nice content that a large portion of players will never do. I think dungeons should be accessible by the majority of the playerbase without having to play on the level of the hardcores. Crazy thought, right? You know who happens to agree with me? Blizzard entertainment. Trion Worlds. Pretty much every other western major developer with an MMO on the market.

But hey, maybe you can go hang out with the Wildstar devs and their 10 players left in that game. They adhere to your mentality. I'm trying to prevent this game from becoming the next Wildstar by slamming these brick walls into players expecting fun, only somewhat challenging content. Keep the highest level of difficulty in the trials, and rebalance your content to reflect that mentality, that's all I'm saying.

And I get it: DLC dungeons are really nice for the hardcore players who can complete them reliably with their groups of friends who have the same mentality. And the groups are easier to form than trials, sure. The problem is, you're shafting the other players by having your cake. And the other players (again I have no data here) I would imagine outnumber you by quite a bit.

It takes a long time for a player to "git gud" even if they're making a conscious effort and playing on a regular basis. Combat in this game is very difficult compared to other MMOs. I was VERY, VERY good in rift, which is mechanically very similar to WoW. I raided with the 9th best guild NA two years ago (granted the game was pretty steeply in decline by then, but still). I can still only do about 30k dps with my best character in this game. And I've been playing consistently for 2 years now. It's not realistic to just address this problem by saying "well git gud scrubs". We need something more substantial and less reliant on players becoming veterans overnight.

LOL I'm shafting others for enjoying the content Zos chooses to give me? Okay. Us end-game players don't come on the forums to whine when we get a crappy little zone DLC with 20 quests that you can finish in a night and yet we get a few dungeons a year and the casuals lose their minds.

And my example is a good one because I was just trying to demonstrate that one shots on normal are not actually one shots hence the players don't learn anything. The normals aren't difficult enough to prepare players for vet which is the whole issue.

There needs to be difficult 4-person content. Not everyone has the time for a raid core. Gating the difficult content behind trials is a horrible idea. We already have exactly what you are asking for, a normal mode of the dungeon that is stupid easy with a minimal amount of dps and awareness. There does not need to be an easier mode.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

It's gotten better since then, but only for the older ones that were actually nerfed, and they can still easily cause groups to ragequit.

code65536 wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

It's gotten better since then, but only for the older ones that were actually nerfed, and they can still easily cause groups to ragequit.

The only DLC dungeons to have been nerfed after the release of the next major patch were WGT and ICP (i.e., I'm excluding fixes/adjustments that happen within the first quarter of their release). None of the Hist, Horns, nor Bones dungeons have been nerfed.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

Apache_Kid wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Apache_Kid wrote: »

Asking for normal DLC dungeons to be made easier is honestly an absurd request. The one-shots don't even really one-shot you just leave you with a little bit of health. I've only ran them on normal as opposed to vet a couple times and I was running falkreath on normal for the first time a couple days ago for a skill point on a random character and I was amazed as i watched my pugs stand right out in the open during a Domihaus shout and live through it. You don't even have to obey the mechanics.

As far as those of you saying that there is no demand for dungeon DLCs you are dead wrong. Some people like myself enjoy the dungeon DLCs more than any other DLC. If you actually go for the achievements they offer much more playtime than some crappy little zone like Hews Bane or the Clockwork city where I could finish all the quests and delves in a day or two. Have been going at the wolfhunter dungeons almost every night for a couple hours since they came out on Xbox NA and all we need is MoS HM and we have had a blast getting the rest of the achievements. Some story DLC zone i would've had 100% complete in the first week. Not as much value.

Dungeon DLCs are nice because they provide content for end-game players without having to put up with the hassle of organizing 11 others for the activity. There needs to be something for players who want a challenge but dont have the time to commit to a core raid team. And you know what's great about these dungeon DLCs? Any one of you who says they don't like them because they are too difficult, all you have to do is get better and find some friends and you can enjoy them like the rest of us and earn cool achievements. There is no gate except the one of your own skill that you put there yourself. Never stop wanting to improve.

This is the type of "gotta pull yourself up by those bootstraps, git gud kid" answer that I was expecting to see, and have seen a lot in this thread.

1) Your example with Falkreath is a bad one. Domihaus is probably the least challenging boss in there, for the reason you just outlined. The spectre / bone golem boss, on the other hand, is far more challenging and causes groups to disband far more often, I assure you.

2) You even say it yourself: "some people". Many, many more people do not enjoy this system. You're part of the vocal minority that the devs listen to, unfortunately.

3) It's nice content that a large portion of players will never do. I think dungeons should be accessible by the majority of the playerbase without having to play on the level of the hardcores. Crazy thought, right? You know who happens to agree with me? Blizzard entertainment. Trion Worlds. Pretty much every other western major developer with an MMO on the market.

But hey, maybe you can go hang out with the Wildstar devs and their 10 players left in that game. They adhere to your mentality. I'm trying to prevent this game from becoming the next Wildstar by slamming these brick walls into players expecting fun, only somewhat challenging content. Keep the highest level of difficulty in the trials, and rebalance your content to reflect that mentality, that's all I'm saying.

And I get it: DLC dungeons are really nice for the hardcore players who can complete them reliably with their groups of friends who have the same mentality. And the groups are easier to form than trials, sure. The problem is, you're shafting the other players by having your cake. And the other players (again I have no data here) I would imagine outnumber you by quite a bit.

It takes a long time for a player to "git gud" even if they're making a conscious effort and playing on a regular basis. Combat in this game is very difficult compared to other MMOs. I was VERY, VERY good in rift, which is mechanically very similar to WoW. I raided with the 9th best guild NA two years ago (granted the game was pretty steeply in decline by then, but still). I can still only do about 30k dps with my best character in this game. And I've been playing consistently for 2 years now. It's not realistic to just address this problem by saying "well git gud scrubs". We need something more substantial and less reliant on players becoming veterans overnight.

LOL I'm shafting others for enjoying the content Zos chooses to give me? Okay. Us end-game players don't come on the forums to whine when we get a crappy little zone DLC with 20 quests that you can finish in a night and yet we get a few dungeons a year and the casuals lose their minds.

And my example is a good one because I was just trying to demonstrate that one shots on normal are not actually one shots hence the players don't learn anything. The normals aren't difficult enough to prepare players for vet which is the whole issue.

There needs to be difficult 4-person content. Not everyone has the time for a raid core. Gating the difficult content behind trials is a horrible idea. We already have exactly what you are asking for, a normal mode of the dungeon that is stupid easy with a minimal amount of dps and awareness. There does not need to be an easier mode.

The funny thing is the population that creates these threads want a single player game. The minute zos nerfs the content they start screaming for solo versions of the dungeons because the long term community quits again due to lack of content because they catered to the churn player

One could just as easily say that the churn players leave now because they complete the story content and don't see themselves capable of endgame due to how daunting the DLC content is. I'm sure many don't properly research and realize the DLC dungeons are actually harder than many trials. WoW and its clones have been successful at creating endgame playerbases partly because they know how to ease the player into it. They ramp up the difficulty gradually, as the player becomes more absorbed in the game. You know, good game design. They don't throw wildly difficult dungeons intermixed with the easier ones at new players and scare them away.

I mean, sure, there are players who will come and go with the content no matter what because elder scrolls and single player preference and all that stuff, but one has to wonder how many more players they could be retaining if they reworked their dungeon system / rebalanced their dungeons. If they performed a rebalance to make DLC easier 1s harder and 2s about the same, and added a nightmare mode on top of veteran to appease the hardcores, that would work as well I guess.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Right now, we're at the point where there are almost as many DLC dungeons as there are non-DLC. With plans in place to release 4 more DLC dungeons every year, it won't be long before the DLC dungeons outweigh the vanilla ones in the pool.

What were once an annoyance for ESO+ players just trying to complete a random are going to become a major roadblock. The fact of the matter is, these dungeons are interesting, mechanically-oriented, challenging, and fun....with the right group. Of veteran players.

To drive home my point above, newer players have no chance at these things. They were designed with experienced players in mind, and that's fine but Zenimax has done nothing to ensure that only players who are up for the challenge are completing them. Forget CP300, there should be a CP600 minimum for vet DLC dungeons. Normal should probably be CP300.

And sure, new players can bumble their way through, but I guarantee you not one of them will say they had a good time. Not one of them will say they preferred it over city of ash or darkshade caverns. They'll probably spend a few hours in there, which is ridiculous by modern MMO dungeon standards.

And I know the classic response here is "well, just queue for what you want, you don't have to use the random dungeon tool."

There are a few things wrong with this train of thought:

1) I'd imagine that many players only even do dungeons because of the daily random bonus. If Zenimax creates a situation in which a random queue only leads to a painful slog through a DLC dungeon, the total number of players queueing up for anything at all will decline sharply. I think we're already seeing this as more and more DLC dungeons are released.

2) If your tool has become unattractive to use because the content that is accessed by the tool is prohibitively difficult, then you've designed a bad tool or bad content. One of the two.

In short, if your solution is "well, just don't do that thing", then it's not a solution. It's a workaround. Workarounds need to be addressed at some point, and that goes beyond ESO or even videogames.

So, in this discussion, let's completely ignore the idea of just not using the tool. Let's assume the tool is vital for a healthy dungeon pool, as it may very well be.

Going back to the central issue then, how do we address this? How do we keep the dungeon-going populace healthy, reduce the already substantial pain that many newer and casual players are put through, and bolster the system to be prepared for all these DLC dungeons on the horizon? The core issue, as I see it, is that we've got all these dungeons, of ridiculously varying difficulty and length to complete, in the same pool.

And yeah, we can split up the pools to make things better, but there are also drawbacks to that proposition. The pool of players in each category shrinks compared to the previous state, and we're back to point #1 that I outlined above. Less players in a pool isn't a good thing, that just leads to longer times. And don't get me wrong, I'd rather see this happen than nothing at all, but there's a better way.

When you look at everything, and how there are countless threads even on the elite-dominated forums about the issues with DLC dungeons, the best, albeit most difficult to accomplish answer becomes clear - ZOS needs to rebalance the dungeons in this game.

There's really no way around it. It's absurd to have such a variance of difficulty in your dungeons for an MMO. Look at WoW. Look at SWTOR. Look at Rift. Guild wars 2 is a bad example, but my point is that we're talking about how to deal with this absurd system instead of addressing how absurd it is and trying to fix it.

Maybe the vanilla 1 dungeons are too easy, sure. Maybe those need to become a little more difficult. At the same time, the DLC dungeons need to come way, way down in difficulty to become digestible by the masses. And yes, I'm talking about both difficulties. You want truly hard content, you've got veteran trials. DLC dungeons are clearly a failed experiment at the point, I'm sure ZOS has heaps of data to back me up.

There is some median level of difficulty, higher than most vanilla dungeons but lower than DLC dungeons, where ALL dungeons need to rest at. I believe WoW did a massive balance pass / overhaul of their older dungeons when Cataclysm came out. This game desperately needs the same. If all the dungeons are approximately the same in terms of difficulty, and that difficulty is close-ish to "2" dungeons, most issues with the dungeon finder go away.