ZOS why does questing still suck...

MornaBaine · May 2020

...in terms of rewards? The ONE thing you guys do really well is write engaging stories and create interesting characters. Yes, there are exceptions, but not everyone will agree on which ones they are. But overall, your writers are top tier. So why do you continue to discourage players from doing them? They remain the least efficient way to accomplish ANYTHING in the game, even in terms of leveling. If I'm burning a scroll or a potion to increase my XP you can BET I'm not going to be wasting it on questing! And at the end of a quest the reward is invariably garbage. A few paltry gold you can make 10 time the amount just by harvesting in a zone and hitting all the chests, and some gear you don't want or need, only good for decon or sale to a vendor as basically trash. Again for far less gold than you can get just mindlessly harvesting and hitting chests, not even counting selling mats on guild stores.

Where are the furnishings and furnishing plans and style mats? Where are the motifs? Where are the style pages? Where are the mounts and pets? The costumes and cosmetics? The treasure maps even? How about making the disguises often used in quests a permanent reward when the quest is completed and making them dyeable?

Achievement furnishings are few and far between and in Greymoor they are HORRIBLY lackluster. Obviously all the good stuff is getting shoved into the antiquities system. So this really is no incentive to quest either.

You are doing your quest designers and writers a terrible disservice by keeping the rewards for quests so pitiful and meaningless. You can do better. You CAN make us WANT to quest. Please do it.

Grandchamp1989 · May 2020

I actually do agree with the rewards being lackluster.

The quests themselves are a hit or miss, I find DLC story to be of higher quality than base game quests.

scorpius2k1 · May 2020

I agree. While the story/lore is great, it could and should be a lot better in the reward area.

*completes long quest, and goes to turn it in*

Here is a tiny bit of XP, 500g, and some trash gear you likely wont have any use for, have a nice day!

You also get better rewards (like pets) just for visiting a zone. Really? How about when you complete a quest line in a zone, you get the pet as a REWARD. Horrible incentivization, and if you think about it a waste of all the time developing. No wonder it makes more sense to grind dungeons endlessly.

Finedaible · May 2020

Rewards from Dailies have always kinda sucked, especially since the beginning of 2019 coinciding with the new release format. They seem to have driven down rewards and reward variety on all dailies since, probably to compel everyone to buy the motifs in the cash shop. Curiously, they nerfed drop rate of New Moon Acolyte pages with this patch since apparently the nearly guaranteed drop rate "was not intended..." Seems like it would be easier to just leave that happy little accident be since the market is already flooded with them and it doesn't affect the game; Unless... maybe there weren't enough sales...

Noxavian · May 2020

MornaBaine wrote: »

...in terms of rewards? The ONE thing you guys do really well is write engaging stories and create interesting characters. Yes, there are exceptions, but not everyone will agree on which ones they are. But overall, your writers are top tier. So why do you continue to discourage players from doing them? They remain the least efficient way to accomplish ANYTHING in the game, even in terms of leveling. If I'm burning a scroll or a potion to increase my XP you can BET I'm not going to be wasting it on questing! And at the end of a quest the reward is invariably garbage. A few paltry gold you can make 10 time the amount just by harvesting in a zone and hitting all the chests, and some gear you don't want or need, only good for decon or sale to a vendor as basically trash. Again for far less gold than you can get just mindlessly harvesting and hitting chests, not even counting selling mats on guild stores.

Where are the furnishings and furnishing plans and style mats? Where are the motifs? Where are the style pages? Where are the mounts and pets? The costumes and cosmetics? The treasure maps even? How about making the disguises often used in quests a permanent reward when the quest is completed and making them dyeable?

Achievement furnishings are few and far between and in Greymoor they are HORRIBLY lackluster. Obviously all the good stuff is getting shoved into the antiquities system. So this really is no incentive to quest either.

You are doing your quest designers and writers a terrible disservice by keeping the rewards for quests so pitiful and meaningless. You can do better. You CAN make us WANT to quest. Please do it.

Reason why the quest rewards suck is very simple.

ALL quests in the entire game can be completed by all characters at lvl 3.

With no challenge presented, my friend, you get equal level of rewards.

If quests had ACTUAL challenges and enemies were harder to fight (not just sponges, have actual mechanics and dealt actual damage) then they could justify giving better rewards.

It's kind of funny actually to see how many people want better rewards, yet don't understand the reason things are like that is because the challenge with quests just doesn't exist. (Not saying this is you, just making an observation in general.)

Noxavian · May 2020

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

I agree. While the story/lore is great, it could and should be a lot better in the reward area.

*completes long quest, and goes to turn it in*

Here is a tiny bit of XP, 500g, and some trash gear you likely wont have any use for, have a nice day!

You also get better rewards (like pets) just for visiting a zone. Really? How about when you complete a quest line in a zone, you get the pet as a REWARD. Horrible incentivization, and if you think about it a waste of all the time developing. No wonder it makes more sense to grind dungeons endlessly.

All of that can be thanks to how easy the quests are, my friend.

Why do you deserve a grand reward for completing a quest that could be done just as easily by a lvl 3?

Now if quests scaled properly to your level to give some sort of challenge....then that'd be another story. By that I mean, perhaps even going as far as to having what enemies you fight be based on your level. How difficult they are and what abilities they have based on the level of the quester. If there is a group or party doing the quest, scale it to the average level of the party.

MornaBaine · May 2020

Noxavian wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

...in terms of rewards? The ONE thing you guys do really well is write engaging stories and create interesting characters. Yes, there are exceptions, but not everyone will agree on which ones they are. But overall, your writers are top tier. So why do you continue to discourage players from doing them? They remain the least efficient way to accomplish ANYTHING in the game, even in terms of leveling. If I'm burning a scroll or a potion to increase my XP you can BET I'm not going to be wasting it on questing! And at the end of a quest the reward is invariably garbage. A few paltry gold you can make 10 time the amount just by harvesting in a zone and hitting all the chests, and some gear you don't want or need, only good for decon or sale to a vendor as basically trash. Again for far less gold than you can get just mindlessly harvesting and hitting chests, not even counting selling mats on guild stores.

Where are the furnishings and furnishing plans and style mats? Where are the motifs? Where are the style pages? Where are the mounts and pets? The costumes and cosmetics? The treasure maps even? How about making the disguises often used in quests a permanent reward when the quest is completed and making them dyeable?

Achievement furnishings are few and far between and in Greymoor they are HORRIBLY lackluster. Obviously all the good stuff is getting shoved into the antiquities system. So this really is no incentive to quest either.

You are doing your quest designers and writers a terrible disservice by keeping the rewards for quests so pitiful and meaningless. You can do better. You CAN make us WANT to quest. Please do it.

Reason why the quest rewards suck is very simple.

ALL quests in the entire game can be completed by all characters at lvl 3.

With no challenge presented, my friend, you get equal level of rewards.

If quests had ACTUAL challenges and enemies were harder to fight (not just sponges, have actual mechanics and dealt actual damage) then they could justify giving better rewards.

It's kind of funny actually to see how many people want better rewards, yet don't understand the reason things are like that is because the challenge with quests just doesn't exist. (Not saying this is you, just making an observation in general.)

As someone who has been playing this game since Day1 and remembers when Doshia was actually scary, trust me, I'm aware of what a faceroll quests have become and it ticks me off. The vamp quest, formerly a thing that was best not attempted before level 20, is now just a "How to Vamp" tutorial that is a total snooze fest. But I think my view of the "why" is a bit different from yours. I don't think quest rewards suck because there's no effort involved in the quests. The quest rewards have ALWAYS sucked, even back when questing was actually challenging! So instead of improving quest rewards when players basically QUIT questing...they just dumbed questing down to nothing. Which, IMO, was entirely the WRONG way to go about things.

codierussell · May 2020

Well most sets are terrible in the game to begin with. There are quests that give good rewards (mother's sorrow lightning staff, briarheart dagger to name a couple), but most overland sets just aren't that great. The difficulty doesn't really mean much imo, ncr+0 takes like 10 minutes and is stupid easy but yet drops three of the best sets in the game.

gatekeeper13 · May 2020

Totally agree.

Questing is too easy and rewards are laughable. They should give sth more unique e.g. collectibles and not trash set items that can be bought from guild traders for 300g.

willjones1122 · May 2020

While I agree with quest rewards and difficulty points raised above. I have to disagree with collectables reward as an answer. There would still be no incentive to do quests beyond your first toon since collectables are account wide. If major quest lines in each zone gave a serious character bound reward at the end that might encourage at least the main storylines to be played. But the rewards would have to be something worth the time. Maybe a set like "The hero of daggerfall(or AD or EP) covenant" set give it a unique bonus and allow the player to select the weight/weapon type as we do with the leveling rewards (i.e. the prophet's gear). Then you could turn in all the sets from the factions to Caldwell for the "hero of tamriel set" that could just be a "perfected" version of the set. Now i realize this isn't a perfect idea as the set would have to be either so universal for any character build that the 5 piece would have to be superior to be useful or so niche it would never get used anyway...
Maybe make it three sets
Master Mage of "insert faction" for magicka dps/healers
Lord Knight of... For tanks
Exalted warrior of ... For stam dps
Then the perfected versions would just be upgraded versions of those. But if the set was well designed it could be a good transition to end game raiding set.
Ok enough rambling - my apologies for this wall of text.

Iccotak · May 2020

Noxavian wrote: »

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

I agree. While the story/lore is great, it could and should be a lot better in the reward area.

*completes long quest, and goes to turn it in*

Here is a tiny bit of XP, 500g, and some trash gear you likely wont have any use for, have a nice day!

You also get better rewards (like pets) just for visiting a zone. Really? How about when you complete a quest line in a zone, you get the pet as a REWARD. Horrible incentivization, and if you think about it a waste of all the time developing. No wonder it makes more sense to grind dungeons endlessly.

Now if quests scaled properly to your level to give some sort of challenge....then that'd be another story. By that I mean, perhaps even going as far as to having what enemies you fight be based on your level. How difficult they are and what abilities they have based on the level of the quester. If there is a group or party doing the quest, scale it to the average level of the party.

This could be a potential solution

Iccotak · May 2020

MornaBaine wrote: »

Noxavian wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

...in terms of rewards? The ONE thing you guys do really well is write engaging stories and create interesting characters. Yes, there are exceptions, but not everyone will agree on which ones they are. But overall, your writers are top tier. So why do you continue to discourage players from doing them? They remain the least efficient way to accomplish ANYTHING in the game, even in terms of leveling. If I'm burning a scroll or a potion to increase my XP you can BET I'm not going to be wasting it on questing! And at the end of a quest the reward is invariably garbage. A few paltry gold you can make 10 time the amount just by harvesting in a zone and hitting all the chests, and some gear you don't want or need, only good for decon or sale to a vendor as basically trash. Again for far less gold than you can get just mindlessly harvesting and hitting chests, not even counting selling mats on guild stores.

Where are the furnishings and furnishing plans and style mats? Where are the motifs? Where are the style pages? Where are the mounts and pets? The costumes and cosmetics? The treasure maps even? How about making the disguises often used in quests a permanent reward when the quest is completed and making them dyeable?

Achievement furnishings are few and far between and in Greymoor they are HORRIBLY lackluster. Obviously all the good stuff is getting shoved into the antiquities system. So this really is no incentive to quest either.

You are doing your quest designers and writers a terrible disservice by keeping the rewards for quests so pitiful and meaningless. You can do better. You CAN make us WANT to quest. Please do it.

Reason why the quest rewards suck is very simple.

ALL quests in the entire game can be completed by all characters at lvl 3.

With no challenge presented, my friend, you get equal level of rewards.

If quests had ACTUAL challenges and enemies were harder to fight (not just sponges, have actual mechanics and dealt actual damage) then they could justify giving better rewards.

It's kind of funny actually to see how many people want better rewards, yet don't understand the reason things are like that is because the challenge with quests just doesn't exist. (Not saying this is you, just making an observation in general.)

As someone who has been playing this game since Day1 and remembers when Doshia was actually scary, trust me, I'm aware of what a faceroll quests have become and it ticks me off. The vamp quest, formerly a thing that was best not attempted before level 20, is now just a "How to Vamp" tutorial that is a total snooze fest. But I think my view of the "why" is a bit different from yours. I don't think quest rewards suck because there's no effort involved in the quests. The quest rewards have ALWAYS sucked, even back when questing was actually challenging! So instead of improving quest rewards when players basically QUIT questing...they just dumbed questing down to nothing. Which, IMO, was entirely the WRONG way to go about things.

@MornaBaine
I'd like to hear your thoughts here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/530402/there-is-too-much-separation-between-story-and-group-content/p1

Starlock · May 2020

For those of you who want to see different quest rewards, how do you plan to deal with the following problems that could emerge from that change?

Most quests are not repeatable. If quest rewards are improved, how can the developers go about compensating those who are locked out of the new rewards on characters who have already completed those quests?
Increasing gold rewards from quests will unbalance the economy. Do you care about balancing the economy for this change or are you okay with significant inflation? What new gold sinks do you plan to create? Perhaps you plan to reduce or eliminate gold drops from other types of activities?
Altering quest rewards impacts the bigger picture of loot progression. How would "improved" quest rewards impact participation in other types of content? Do you plan to account for that?
What a good reward looks like varies from player to player. What, exactly, do we mean by "improving" quest rewards? How do we design this to accommodate the very diverse player base this game has while also addressing the problem of most quests not being repeatable?

Personally, I have no problem with quest rewards as they are now. Have you ever told a character's story naturally? When you tell a character's story naturally - no power leveling, no crafted gear, basically playing like a new player would - the quest rewards are very useful when the only other source of gear you have is random world drops and treasure chests.

The main change I would make is to remove character levels entirely. They really don't serve any purpose since One Tamriel. What this would do for quest rewards is remove the level scaling on gold rewards and well as the level scaling on the gear rewards.

willjones1122 · May 2020

Starlock wrote: »

For those of you who want to see different quest rewards, how do you plan to deal with the following problems that could emerge from that change?
Most quests are not repeatable. If quest rewards are improved, how can the developers go about compensating those who are locked out of the new rewards on characters who have already completed those quests?

Increasing gold rewards from quests will unbalance the economy. Do you care about balancing the economy for this change or are you okay with significant inflation? What new gold sinks do you plan to create? Perhaps you plan to reduce or eliminate gold drops from other types of activities?

Altering quest rewards impacts the bigger picture of loot progression. How would "improved" quest rewards impact participation in other types of content? Do you plan to account for that?

What a good reward looks like varies from player to player. What, exactly, do we mean by "improving" quest rewards? How do we design this to accommodate the very diverse player base this game has while also addressing the problem of most quests not being repeatable?

Personally, I have no problem with quest rewards as they are now. Have you ever told a character's story naturally? When you tell a character's story naturally - no power leveling, no crafted gear, basically playing like a new player would - the quest rewards are very useful when the only other source of gear you have is random world drops and treasure chests.

The main change I would make is to remove character levels entirely. They really don't serve any purpose since One Tamriel. What this would do for quest rewards is remove the level scaling on gold rewards and well as the level scaling on the gear rewards.

1. My idea for an overland quest set (see above wall of text post, lol ) could be tied to the achievements (i.e. hero of daggerfall, ep, tamriel, etc.) So they could easily verify and reward those who have completed those quests, perhaps with an in game vendor or token.
2. I didn't mention increasing gold - that's a whole other issue but i dont think a slight increase would be too detrimental.
3. If the set i proposed was well balanced and designed it could be a way to bridge into endgame/vet content with out having to run one instance with horrible rng a thousand times. Thus increasing participation in the other activities.
4. Again splitting the quest rewards into 3 different set options and giving players a way to upgrade/ change the set type at the end with the "perfected" set allows different build options for leveling and endgame (i.e. you level in dps gear but decide to tank at endgame, when you complete caldwells gold just pick the tanking set instead of the dps).
I have leveled several characters naturally and not really ever used the quest rewards. A 2h sword of the wyrd tree? Not sure who is using that... But to each their own.
You bring up some great points though and i am curious as to what other problems/feedback you might have?

Red_Feather · May 2020

This is about the rewards!

Yes you are absolutely right. The rewards are like a sour end note to great quests!

I'd be happy if quests rewarded pieces that you put together to get a legendary gear piece. Who doesn't want a legendary gear. It's easier to do than make every quest reward a unique cosmetic or memento or whatever.

codierussell · May 2020

Starlock wrote: »

The main change I would make is to remove character levels entirely. They really don't serve any purpose since One Tamriel. What this would do for quest rewards is remove the level scaling on gold rewards and well as the level scaling on the gear rewards.

I agree with this. Leveling is just this annoying thing that takes endgame players like 2 hours of time. The power leveling in this game is pretty good but really has no point. New players are going to play through the story and veteran players don't have the pain anymore. All I can say is thank god vet levels are not still a thing.

MornaBaine · June 2020

willjones1122 wrote: »

While I agree with quest rewards and difficulty points raised above. I have to disagree with collectables reward as an answer. There would still be no incentive to do quests beyond your first toon since collectables are account wide. If major quest lines in each zone gave a serious character bound reward at the end that might encourage at least the main storylines to be played. But the rewards would have to be something worth the time. Maybe a set like "The hero of daggerfall(or AD or EP) covenant" set give it a unique bonus and allow the player to select the weight/weapon type as we do with the leveling rewards (i.e. the prophet's gear). Then you could turn in all the sets from the factions to Caldwell for the "hero of tamriel set" that could just be a "perfected" version of the set. Now i realize this isn't a perfect idea as the set would have to be either so universal for any character build that the 5 piece would have to be superior to be useful or so niche it would never get used anyway...
Maybe make it three sets
Master Mage of "insert faction" for magicka dps/healers
Lord Knight of... For tanks
Exalted warrior of ... For stam dps
Then the perfected versions would just be upgraded versions of those. But if the set was well designed it could be a good transition to end game raiding set.
Ok enough rambling - my apologies for this wall of text.

I LOVE this idea. ZOS, pay attention!

MornaBaine · June 2020

willjones1122 wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

For those of you who want to see different quest rewards, how do you plan to deal with the following problems that could emerge from that change?
Most quests are not repeatable. If quest rewards are improved, how can the developers go about compensating those who are locked out of the new rewards on characters who have already completed those quests?

Increasing gold rewards from quests will unbalance the economy. Do you care about balancing the economy for this change or are you okay with significant inflation? What new gold sinks do you plan to create? Perhaps you plan to reduce or eliminate gold drops from other types of activities?

Altering quest rewards impacts the bigger picture of loot progression. How would "improved" quest rewards impact participation in other types of content? Do you plan to account for that?

What a good reward looks like varies from player to player. What, exactly, do we mean by "improving" quest rewards? How do we design this to accommodate the very diverse player base this game has while also addressing the problem of most quests not being repeatable?

Personally, I have no problem with quest rewards as they are now. Have you ever told a character's story naturally? When you tell a character's story naturally - no power leveling, no crafted gear, basically playing like a new player would - the quest rewards are very useful when the only other source of gear you have is random world drops and treasure chests.

The main change I would make is to remove character levels entirely. They really don't serve any purpose since One Tamriel. What this would do for quest rewards is remove the level scaling on gold rewards and well as the level scaling on the gear rewards.

1. My idea for an overland quest set (see above wall of text post, lol ) could be tied to the achievements (i.e. hero of daggerfall, ep, tamriel, etc.) So they could easily verify and reward those who have completed those quests, perhaps with an in game vendor or token.
2. I didn't mention increasing gold - that's a whole other issue but i dont think a slight increase would be too detrimental.
3. If the set i proposed was well balanced and designed it could be a way to bridge into endgame/vet content with out having to run one instance with horrible rng a thousand times. Thus increasing participation in the other activities.
4. Again splitting the quest rewards into 3 different set options and giving players a way to upgrade/ change the set type at the end with the "perfected" set allows different build options for leveling and endgame (i.e. you level in dps gear but decide to tank at endgame, when you complete caldwells gold just pick the tanking set instead of the dps).
I have leveled several characters naturally and not really ever used the quest rewards. A 2h sword of the wyrd tree? Not sure who is using that... But to each their own.
You bring up some great points though and i am curious as to what other problems/feedback you might have?

I don' think I could improve on the solutions posited here. Nicely done!

MornaBaine · June 2020

Red_Feather wrote: »

This is about the rewards!

Yes you are absolutely right. The rewards are like a sour end note to great quests!

I'd be happy if quests rewarded pieces that you put together to get a legendary gear piece. Who doesn't want a legendary gear. It's easier to do than make every quest reward a unique cosmetic or memento or whatever.

This is a neat and very elegant solution as well. I like it!

MornaBaine · June 2020

I'd also be cool with new style pages...that DON'T cost gold to use AND give you an outfit slot! It'd be very easy for them to come up with style pages for main story quests at least.

kargen27 · June 2020

I don't care about rewards for quests. I like the stories. Well, not all the stories but most of them. If they did improve the rewards it shouldn't be something that players feel they need to stay competitive.

Mykriz · June 2020

I have to agree that the quest rewards are lackluster. ESO overall has pretty terrible in game rewards for any activity. There are hardly any mounts, no new houses are available and hardly any pets.