[Dragons] ZOS please don't make them Alik'r-Easy

Dusk_Coven · October 2019

EDIT: RECOMMENDED METHOD: Just let them fly around a bit more and only land every hour on the hour. The extra time might be the difference needed to discourage huge groups from zerging them too much while still making them accessible for quests and such. Same reward for effort but not bags and bags of rewards every 5 minutes.
Or if you want to make it a fight mechanic, using Ballistae (that are already at some dragon sites) was one idea https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/498776/dragons-landing-sites-have-ballistae#latest
Another idea might be to make dragons smart and troll us. At 33% health if there are too many people fighting it, it drops a raid-wide knockback aoe and takes to the air for a few minutes to recover. When it comes back it spends more time with breath weapons to carpet bomb the arena before landing.

NWO could force people to leave the arena by making the dragons invulnerable if engaged by too many, but that was for guild raids only and might be too harsh here.

Grandma · October 2019

i mean, they have a charity going so intentionally adding preventative measures from people killing them to donate to the charity would probably be a really bad PR move.

that said i'm all for increased difficulty of anything in this game, provided it's after the charity event.

Taleof2Cities · October 2019

I’ve said it in a number of threads already:

When the novelty of dragons wears off months from now, you don’t want to have these super difficult dragons that small groups can’t handle ... while at the same time blocking Dragonguard daily progression for players.

Leave the overland dragons alone, please.

If you want a difficult dragon to fight, find a group for Sunspire.

Ragnarock41 · October 2019

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

I’ve said it in a number of threads already:

When the novelty of dragons wears off months from now, you don’t want to have these super difficult dragons that small groups can’t handle ... while at the same time blocking Dragonguard daily progression for players.

Leave the overland dragons alone, please.

If you want a difficult dragon to fight, find a group for Sunspire.

If you want to solo everything, and don't want to bother grouping, then maybe play a singleplayer game.

Dusk_Coven · October 2019

The main problem with Alik'r is the CONVENIENCE and it looks like the same problem with Dragons.
From wayshrine to Dolmen/Dragon, the route is short AND the respawn is short.
That's why dolmens are not popular in many other zones. Auridon is a bit more inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as, for example, Bangkorai where there's a dolmen deep behind mobs and far from a Wayshrine -- so keeping the rotation up while still hitting all the dolmens is too annoying to do. It would take some coordination to keep all 3 dolmens camped, and why do that when you can just rush around in Alik'r?

When a repeatable boss is so convenient to rapidly farm, people will start zerging it and its popularity won't die down. And in this way Dragons are worse than Dolmens because they drop a lot of loot -- multiples of loot compared to a dolmen -- while taking approximately as long.

Increasing combat difficulty is one way to still leave the respawn rate and repeatability rate, but decrease the effort:reward ratio and reduce AFK farmers who just show up to get hit and thereby "participate". However it is also harder to tweak.

Decreasing the respawn rate is a much simpler way to reduce convenience and reward and thereby reduce the effort:reward ratio. You can still get a good reward, but you need to wait -- either wait for a team or wait for a dragon if you want to farm them all way.
But if you decrease it too much people might not do the related quests at all, because they are impatient. However, that is still fine IF there is an alternate progression for quests, such as doing a delve instead.

Decreasing the respawn rate into a RELIABLE timer is another possibility. This is what NWO does -- they drop five huge dragons, but it's on a long timer so that in between people can get groups ready AND everyone knows when to show up so even if you are not in a group, you can probably find one just by showing up at the proper time.

Similarly Alik'r Dolmens could be handled in the same way -- don't let the next dolmen immediately drop but put a long timer on respawn and let all dolmens on a map be active.

Dragonredux · October 2019

There are some things I disagree with but i do agree that i don't want to see the dragons become Alik'r dolmens 2.0. From a tank perspective i actually like fighting them when they don't drop from 100% to 0% in like 2 minutes. That being it is also a pain when the fight takes like 20+ minutes due it being 3 people there, it has happened before and since they fly away after some time it might be a bit more problematic in the future.

I believe the lesser of the two evils is extending the timer to 5 minutes rather than just buffing them again and as someone else mentioned Sunspire exist if i really want a hard dragon fight.

As far as not being on board on buffing the dragons. The dragons now do major defile which i have to purge if i want to stay alive can't depend on a healer being there. Every dragon can spawn the undead army which are probably the toughest to deal out of all the adds and the dragons can enrage the adds now which i know i can drag them out before it activates. In dragon group at worst with like 3 people i can see maybe getting overwhelmed eventually if the adds don't die quick enough.

Luckylancer · October 2019

Allow X% of hp loss every second on dolmens and dragons. This will hard cap the dps of players.

Dusk_Coven · October 2019

Luckylancer wrote: »

Allow X% of hp loss every second on dolmens and dragons. This will hard cap the dps of players.

That's an interesting idea too. If we force-extend the fight and phases, that would allow more people to actually reach the dragons instead of only those with fast horses.

NoodleESO · October 2019

I wouldn't call them easy, there's just sooooo many players fighting them. if there were five people doing it we'd hear complaints that dragons are op can cant be killed

Dusk_Coven · October 2019

NoodleESO wrote: »

I wouldn't call them easy, there's just sooooo many players fighting them. if there were five people doing it we'd hear complaints that dragons are op can cant be killed

Which is probably part of the zone design plan to get more people to revisit the zone. I guess over time we'll see if popularity dies down -- which it probably won't because of the huge bag of loot you get for token effort.

I would prefer to see the loot toned down somewhat and the dragon scaled. Also, @Luckylancer 's idea of hard capping can forcibly pace the encounter for any number of participants. Maybe scale it for 4, but hard capping would allow it to also be zerged.

Naftal · October 2019

Dragons, world bosses etc. should have their hp scaling with the amount of players.

I don't care about people not getting there in time, but none of the world things feel like you're playing at all if there's too many players. For most of this type of content, two players is already too much and removes all effort.

Dusk_Coven · October 2019

Naftal wrote: »

but none of the world things feel like you're playing at all if there's too many players

People already basically go AFK at Alik'r Dolmens. Might be some are already doing the same at Dragons -- just rez at the end.
Sad to see Dragons farmed like Dolmens for so much more loot. Alik'r Dolmens isn't a new phenomenon. ZOS needs to pay more attention to overland play styles.
That said, I'm not sure what the solution is to AFK-ers who just get hit or allow themselves to die to get credit. Which is why I think dissuading farming in the first place by reducing the respawn is a good solution. It'll trim some people who don't like the time:reward ratio.