Faulgor wrote: »

ESO is an incredible game for beginning and casual players. It seems like there is always something to do or you can work towards, be it quests, achievements, crafting, fashion, skill lines. I still fondly remember trying to find glyphs to level my Enchanting skill, or checking urns in Dwarven ruins for the Dwemer motif.
However, ESO is 5 years old this year, and even casual players eventually hit the inevitable endpoint of the game, when all villains are slain, all skills maxed out, and all items upgraded. At this point, solo content basically vanishes (safe for vMA, which is 3 years old now), and instead of opening up as you progess, it feels like the game is actually closing down. Content updates are of course welcome, but they don't exceed the difficulty of already conquered zones, and can be completed simply by light attacking by sufficiently advanced players. I believe this is only partially due to One Tamriel, which opened the whole game from the start, and mainly due to some major content gaps in ESO.


The Issue

ESO covers these PvE gameplay areas very well

• casual solo
• casual, advanced and expert group content for 4 players (dungeons)
• advanced and expert group content for 12 players (trials)

However, there is a noticable lack in these

• advanced and expert solo
• freeform group content for groups of 2, 3, 5, 6 ... 11 people

It seems bizarre, but in a game as large as ESO, I often find myself with nothing worthwhile to do on my own. Yes, there are dailies with new motifs and the like, but they aren't in any way interesting or challenging. They are chores. There are a tremendous amount of fantastic areas in Tamriel, and it's sad that you usually only visit them once. Sometimes I run a new character through a delve or public dungeon, and wish I could just stay there and do something meaningful with my main. Most of the time, I just find myself doing my crafting writs, maybe feeding a horse on an alt, and logging out again. Even new zone content is always a bit of a disappointment, because while new enemies and mechanics could be compelling, they aren't when everything dies in a few normal hits. It feels like, as your character progress and you become more advanced, you are increasingly missing out on worthwhile locales to visit and combat mechanics to enjoy. And artificially gimping yourself, either by not allocating CP or wearing poor equipment is not a solution - the whole game design of an RPG is centered around character progression, and if it only remains interesting by asking me to stay the way I was at the beginning, the game defeats its own purpose.

So why not do group content then, it's an MMO after all, right? Well, unless your group is precisely 4 or 12 players, you're out of luck, and I suspect I'm not the only one who's often felt like a fifth wheel when a guild group for a dungeon run was already full. In contrast, as a beginning player, I would often wait for someone to come along and help me with a delve boss, or we would team up to complete a public dungeon. Even those rare occasions of freeform group play are nonexistent for advanced players. The effect is that I see many guild members only log in for a weekly trial, because outside of organized group content, there simply is no content for advanced players.

There was one instance in this game where both of these issues were solved, and that was, to me, Imperial City at launch. VR 15/16 gear was introduced then, the PvE enemies in the sewers were tougher than usual overland mobs, and there was a lot of incentive to play there: Either for the new crafting materials, Tel Var stones, or trophy items to unlock Xivkyn chests. The Tel Var system kept things even more exciting, as it forced you to consider risk vs reward (and all of that without even considering the PvP side of things, which is not the topic of this thread). You would very frequently find a group of players in the sewers forming spontaneously, to farm for items or take on one of the bosses, including Molag Bal in the center.
It was truly the best experience I've ever had in ESO, again, without even going into PvP.


A Possible Solution

There are some solutions to these issues. One is, of course, to add new content to specifically allow these types of gameplay, for example something like the Imperial City sewers without PvP, or veteran difficulty public dungeons. However, something like this would be more ambitious, and doesn't fit into ZOS' update cadence for ESO.
A very minor solution to at least give advanced solo players something to do would be a reward update to vMA - there are only so many Winterborn hats one person needs. Of course, it's still 3 year old content, and I can't see many people being thrilled about running it over and over again for new rewards.

No, I think it it is obvious that the best solution, one that reinvigorates the whole of Tamriel for advanced players without having to add new content, and offers something for solo players and groups of any size, is a higher, rewarding difficulty setting for overland PvE content. Rewarding is an important factor in this, as higher difficulty without any meaning has already failed in this game once before with silver and gold veteran zones - another reason why artificially increasing your own difficulty is not a sustainable solution.

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, which would only cost more development time, especially when all mechanics we need for this to work are already in place.

Character Scaling
One Tamriel has done a lot of groundwork to make Tamriel accessible for everyone, mainly by scaling players to the world around them. A similar character adjustment also exists in PvP with the Battlespirit buff. A personalized difficulty setting can easily use the same system, simply scaling your character down by applying a debuff that decreases your combat effectiveness. This way, players or all levels, expertise and difficulty setting can continue to play together in one Tamriel. There is no need to introduce new, more difficult zones, and revert all the good work One Tamriel has done.

Tel Var System
The Tel Var system is a brilliant way to add a new currency reward in tandem with a sense of risk and reward that should be inherent in higher difficulty settings. Ideally, a new currency for overland PvE would work similary, by increasing the strength of the debuff and thus the difficulty the more currency you are currently carrying. This way, even casual or hesitant players can dabble in this new reward system, without having to face the highest possible difficulty.

Reward Merchants
ESO has several merchants for specific currencies, mainly those for Tel Var, AP, and Master Writs. Similarly, a reward merchant for a new veteran difficulty currency could offer item sets, polymorphs, motifs, outfits, furnishings, mounts, etc. These merchants can also easily be expanded or adjusted as the sole "faucet" of these new rewards (by the way, an update to Tel Var, Alliance War and Master Writ merchants would be very welcome - there are only so many soul gems you want to buy).


A Proposal

I would like to sketch a system for you, that uses all these elements and perfectly fits into the world of The Elder Scrolls.

We happen upon - somewhere in a new zone, perhaps - a shrine to the Daedric Prince of Bargains, Clavicus Vile, whom we've already had mutually beneficial dealings with in Summerset. He offers us a new deal: Access to the goods of his Skaafin underlings for the small price of a tiny bit of our strength. After accepting his proposal, we are granted a memento that activates a debuff for ~2 hours: Whenever we kill an overland mob, we get a certain amount (or chance) of Clavicus Coins.
However, as we accumulate coins, we find our power continously diminishing - a modest 20% debuff after 100 coins, 40% after 1000, and a massive 60% with 10000 coins in our pockets. And when we die, all our collected coins are lost. The upside is that our coins per kill also seem to increase. Whether we put the coins in the bank, or suffer the debuff for better rewards, is up to us.

The Skaafin reward merchant will also gladly take the coins off of you, in exchange for things like a new Vile themed motif (or in the spirit of the Daedric Prince, a random motif page), Rueful weapon outfits, consumables, Daedric furnishings, and maybe even a mount (how big can Barbas get?) or new item sets - possibly with the new buff Minor Hunter, increasing damage against non-dungeon mobs by 5%. Who knows, maybe you'll even get a rare Masque of Clavicus Vile style page out of a random reward box!
Additionally, this system could add new achievements, titles and dyes for completing certain content on higher difficulty.


The Concerns

From previous discussions on this topic, I supect there are concerns, mainly because this might add new rewards to the game that are not accessible otherwise, and this might only further increase the gap between high end players and beginners. To this end, my proposed system is purposefully desgined so that the first 100 coins or so you acquire don't require a higher difficulty at all, and even after that continue in a staggered difficulty. This means you could acquire the new rewards, though more slowly, even if you don't want to play at a higher difficulty. Additionally, if new item sets are added, they should be specifically designed to help in overland PvE content, not raiding or PvP (hence the Minor Hunter buff). This would also keep them in line with current reward structures.

Now, developers are much harder to convince than players. They have to put in the time, work, and ultimately money to make something like this a reality, and it comes at the expense of other things that could have been developed in its stead. I believe the strongest argument is that this would undoubtedly increase the longevity of existing content and the game as a whole, and thus increase player retention. It is probably the easiest way to repurpose existing content without having to develop new zones - doesn't that sound like a bargain?! It is also one of the most frequently requested features by the community, and as the recent announcement of the Necromancer class has shown, this is not trivial. However, I realize a system like this is not easily monetized like housing or the outfit system was, in fact granting cosmetics that could be sold separately in the store through gameplay. The only concession that I could make is that this should not be a base game update, but tied to a zone DLC or chapter, which could be easily done by placing the relevant NPCs there.

What do you think? Are there any other concerns you have? Would you do it differently?
Or are you just waiting for patch day to be over like I am?

Faulgor wrote: »

So why not do group content then, it's an MMO after all, right? Well, unless your group is precisely 4 or 12 players, you're out of luck, and I suspect I'm not the only one who's often felt like a fifth wheel when a guild group for a dungeon run was already full. In contrast, as a beginning player, I would often wait for someone to come along and help me with a delve boss, or we would team up to complete a public dungeon. Even those rare occasions of freeform group play are nonexistent for advanced players. The effect is that I see many guild members only log in for a weekly trial, because outside of organized group content, there simply is no content for advanced players.