Enough with Overland content that's difficult to do alone/small group

spartaxoxo · October 2020

AlnilamE wrote: »

Oh, so you want people to do this content that you say they aren't doing, but heaven forbid they are not up to your standards and are "leeching"... There are so many lowbies at dragons, and they die all the time, and that's OK. Everyone is welcome!

Absolutely not the case. I don't care if someone leech, I'll even go out of my way to let a total stranger leech if they alert me they need something. But it does limit scarcity of an item when everyone can get rewarded regardless if they were there for a lot or a little of the content being farmed. This is why overland rewards that are good to farm pretty quickly become trash if a lot of people are farming, for example during an event. They become far less scarce.

This is why the kinds of people who want a challenge and to farm something, generally will not choose Overland for that. And it's why rewards that aren't bound aren't gonna generally be good enough incentive to do them. If they are good enough to be worth actually farming, so many people will do it that it will quickly no longer be the case. And if they're not good enough, people will generally not participate in the content much resulting in making it impossible to really farm what is there.

The transmute crystal solution someone else offered is also an interesting solution. If it gets people farming and regularly running it, that will also solve the problem of it being too difficult to farm by adding more bodies.

In the end I just want this content to be able to be used as it's so clearly intended. By randoms on the overland doing overland content. You shouldn't need a dedicated group for Overland, it's supposed to be an alternative to dungeons, arenas, and trials.

TwinLamps · October 2020

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The people who claim to want this do not spend any amount of appreciable time at this content. They are in trials and dungeons farming things that are worth farming and that they can't just buy. They are not using it. They want this stuff in theory alone. They do not want to spend real and consistent time with it.

Meanwhile people who want to play Overland content can go literally hours and sometimes days before they can clear this content. The rewards for that content become scarce and overpriced.

It's a nightmare. Please stop with content like Harrowstorms and Dragons, instead scale the content difficulty based on who is using it .

Before we got frost dragons I kinda liked these.
And harrowstorms are plain and simply bs.
I havent met a person in game that likes these.

spartaxoxo · October 2020

ArchMikem wrote: »

.
In my view personally, these events shouldn't be something to farm. They're meant to be group encounters that take a good chunk of time to defeat, hence the numerous enemies and large health pools. It's an experience. Back during the save cats event when scores of players were just annihilating Dragons every couple minutes, that was disgusting.

They drop alchemy ingredients and furnishing plans. And their drops rates are only reasonable on those items when people farm them. Those items are not event rewards, they are meant to be farmed.

RebornV3x · October 2020

I don't think it wouldnt hurt to nerf dragons a bit and eventually Harrowstorms once a new chapter comes out.

spartaxoxo · October 2020

RebornV3x wrote: »

I don't think it wouldnt hurt to nerf dragons a bit and eventually Harrowstorms once a new chapter comes out.

Yeah. They are an appropriate difficultly when everyone is doing them. That's why I think the difficulty should scale based on who is there. It future proof it but also helps with the cake walk these things become during events.

Like for the Harrowstorms they could spawn more ghosts the more people fight it and less Ghosts when nobody is there. This way if nobody is around a solo player can get things done but it lots of people are there the fight gets harder.

Raideen · October 2020

The OP is correct. If someone is trying to do dragons right now the likely chance is that there will be few to no people there working on them. Folks have moved on. But if you need to do them on an alt, or if someone is new to the game, its extremely time consuming to try and get a group together.

Heck, ONE DAY after this last event, my GF and I went to solitude to do dailies. Got to the Harrowstorm...no one there. We started working it thinking more would show...nothing, we had to abandon it because we could not complete the harrowstorm with the two of us. This is CURRENT content and just ONE day after the end of the event and that zone went from being busy with people everywhere to nothing, I mean nothing. Even farming was easy, no one out there farming.

I commented to my GF that I don't think the games population on PCNA is as healthy as we are expected to believe, I even wonder how many during the event were bots. It was utterly dismal.

Ohh, this was between 12:00pm central and 4:00pm central.

renne · October 2020

Raideen wrote: »

The OP is correct. If someone is trying to do dragons right now the likely chance is that there will be few to no people there working on them. Folks have moved on. But if you need to do them on an alt, or if someone is new to the game, its extremely time consuming to try and get a group together.

Heck, ONE DAY after this last event, my GF and I went to solitude to do dailies. Got to the Harrowstorm...no one there. We started working it thinking more would show...nothing, we had to abandon it because we could not complete the harrowstorm with the two of us. This is CURRENT content and just ONE day after the end of the event and that zone went from being busy with people everywhere to nothing, I mean nothing. Even farming was easy, no one out there farming.

I commented to my GF that I don't think the games population on PCNA is as healthy as we are expected to believe, I even wonder how many during the event were bots. It was utterly dismal.

Ohh, this was between 12:00pm central and 4:00pm central.

That there's no one grinding the stuff they were grinding for the event immediately after the event ended is hardly a shock. Everyone is sick of grinding harrowstorms at the moment, places are ALWAYS much emptier immediately after an event because everyone is sick of doing the stuff they've spent extra time doing. Population enough to do harrowstorm builds back up, like any of these things. I know myself the last thing I want to look at right now is a harrowstorm because I spent so much time on them during the event.

There are absolutely still people doing dragons right now. I log on in the middle of the night in the US because I'm in Australia, and on PS4 which would have an even smaller population than PC I can easily get the dragon dailies done.

Reverb · October 2020

Dolmens scale based on the number of players. Easily soloable, with more enemies as there are more people. Geysers seem to as well, as I’ve soloed those as well. It would be so much better if dragons and harrowstorms worked like that too.

juliandracos · October 2020

I only started a few months ago. I don't do group dungeons or trials. I have found the rest of the content to be pathetically easy. The only content I could not solo was WB, Dragons and Harrowstorms.

If one wants to complete these and cannot get help, I suppose that is a problem. I just think that is almost everything else in the game is so easy, a few things that are a challenge would be nice.

With that said, I am not a fan of ZOS in designing these things. It is essentially gather a bunch of people for a short amount of time and then it is over. I would like content more challenging content for solo. Not content that requires lot of people to do, but something that makes it difficult for solo to do. Or better yet, small group content. Running 4 man dungeons is not what I am thinking.

Public dungeons, at one point, may have served that purpose. These can pretty much be soloed. Even in the occasional dungeon that has a boss or something I cannot solo, someone else can come by and solo it - often insanely fast. I miss forming up different sized groups to do different types of content. Content that takes a sustained amount of time to complete.

Can't there be some option between solo, 4, and 12?

Magdalina · October 2020

juliandracos wrote: »

I only started a few months ago. I don't do group dungeons or trials. I have found the rest of the content to be pathetically easy. The only content I could not solo was WB, Dragons and Harrowstorms.

If one wants to complete these and cannot get help, I suppose that is a problem. I just think that is almost everything else in the game is so easy, a few things that are a challenge would be nice.

With that said, I am not a fan of ZOS in designing these things. It is essentially gather a bunch of people for a short amount of time and then it is over. I would like content more challenging content for solo. Not content that requires lot of people to do, but something that makes it difficult for solo to do. Or better yet, small group content. Running 4 man dungeons is not what I am thinking.

Public dungeons, at one point, may have served that purpose. These can pretty much be soloed. Even in the occasional dungeon that has a boss or something I cannot solo, someone else can come by and solo it - often insanely fast. I miss forming up different sized groups to do different types of content. Content that takes a sustained amount of time to complete.

Can't there be some option between solo, 4, and 12?

There's Maelstrom Arena for pure solo challenge and I think there's another one coming with next dlc. Imo, open world things where you team up with other people for the fight, then all go your merry ways, are fine - it's just its own type of thing, one that teams you up randomly with absolutely random number of absolutely random people, requiring no obligation, scheduling, even grouping per se, etc. It can be fun, can be frustrating, but it's a nice thing for a change.

I'd absolutely get behind a 2 man arena though. That just sounds like so much fun. As it currently stands, your options for something between 1 and 4 people are rather limited, but you can go underman content intended for bigger groups. I find 2 manning dragons pretty fun, for example, it's fairly challenging, but definitely not impossible. You can easily 2 man normal dungeons, you can also 2 man most vet dungeons (that'd be a bit more challenging though).

TwinLamps · October 2020

We need mid tier content.
Stuff are either way too easy and boring or extremely hard.
I understand why some content should be easy but you made 80% of all like that.
And I fail to see why anyone had idea harrowstorms would be good as this.
its lazy design, ton of oneshot mechanics again, do you guys test content you release?
Things like these make players not stay in that zone for long. And then they dont tell their friends new zone is amazing.
And then you sell less copies of the said zone. And then we both lose.

Thing that is done right on spot - world bosses
You have soloable ones and at least one that cannot be soloed in any regular means.
I am OK with these, they seem fun.

Delves are not bad at all as well.

but why are harrowstorms overtuned is beyond me. We dont even have an icon showing us where these happen at the time, like we had for dragons in Elsweyr(s). Please, fix these. Noone wants them nerfed to the ground but at the current state why would anyone do them in the first place?
Rewards are not god enough for the effort.
Also most players do not enjoy being forced to wait for 4-10 more people and I mean people that actually know what they are doing just to do a content that isnt rewarding enough.
Either significantly buff the rewards or downtune the event so it can be done by 2-3 players.

AyaDark · October 2020

I think i can solo all overland content.
With one more, we can do HM if a lot of DLC s.

The problem, why we do not go overland, is becouse it is simple and boring for us.

I can solo dragon in elsweyr.
I kill it 100+ times to get antique, and it becomes boring, so there are not a lot strong players in it.
They get some thing and go away.

Thats why, for those who play overland it looks hard.

People who do overland do not have some rare exp, that you can only obtain in DLC s when you try HM + in it.

So they look alcast and etc, and try to use META gear - that is good for raid runs in some group, that likes to play like this

But it is anchor for tham.

They think, that META is the best option, it is really not true

So they try not to learn and play like they like, but try to imitate others player play.
Copy is always < than original , so no progress.

So it looks hard. But if you try to stop use meta, do what you like, all will become more simple.

You will understand what to do. May be insome group by your own choise you will use the same sets as meta does, but it will be your own choise.

META is not META. It do not work in some situations. META is only good for 1 task, and one group, who made it. For all others it will not work

It will not be META in that situation.

If for example some one can do better, than meta does, but can not find players good enough to play like this - yes it will be better META, but it will not work.
Because no players good enough to play it.

The same for current meta, it is not the best, but there are people who close some thing in it.

If you try to imitate it, may be you can do the same one day.

But if you do not, will you ? Yes. But in some different way you need to create.

Do you see a lot players kill solo dragons in meta ?
No. So it is not a meta for solo kill dragon.

But it is possible, all you need is just try

Change builds, sets and it will be easy for you 1 day.

Overland is really not as hard. So just try to do it from other point of look. And all be fine.

Thechuckage · October 2020

Ratinira wrote: »

Thechuckage wrote: »

Stinkyremy wrote: »

I am getting quite frustrated at doing world bosses that are so OP you need a full group to do them. it wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't daily quests and the unique loot from doing the daily quests.
Thing is a lot of people in the game are unsocial, they don't share quests, wont help others ect.
I like the challenging content like dragons and harrowstorms, they are good and unique, though world bosses should be able to be done solo.
It would be better if the storms dragons and bosses had a finite amount of health that doesn't respawn if there is a wipe, that means even if you are on your own you could eventually kill it even if after 100 deaths!

Tbh though they are making content that is trying to replicate the game as it was on launch. We couldn't do world bosses or dark anchors on our own at launch, harrows specifically remind me of the dark anchors at launch. People we writing in zone chat when one starts.

So far there has been one WB that had mechanics that either needed another player, or being able to burst down. The Hunger WB in vvardenfell. All the other world bosses, no problem.

Unless something new dropped with greymoor, don't see the issue.

Can you show your strategy about soloing Walks-Like-Thunder in Mirkmire? The one that summons healing totems that heals to 100% in seconds?
Because I was trying to solo it and I have no idea how to one-shot totems that are even out of range. And after seconds boss is fresh and brand-new again...

I missed murkmire, so 2 WB's. Unless is a bug like others have said.
Point still stands.

barney2525 · October 2020

dazee wrote: »

I've not had an issue doing harrowstorms, as long as you have a few competent people there it's not hard. However I do think it will become near abandoned once the next chapter comes out, at which point it would certainly need to be adjusted to be easier to solo.

I like how harrowstorms arent faceroll easy for one person to do, but as soon as there's just not enough people they're gonna need to change.

Except it Won't change, just like Dragons did not change when Elsweyr dropped in population.

This is their track record. And people complain now that the current rewards are not worth the effort. If they did adjust, making dragons and storms on a par with Dolmens, the rewards would be reduced as well.

IMHO

AdamBourke · October 2020

I'd like to see Harrowstorms (and all future world events) scale like dolmens. Dragons shouldn't, but maybe increase the rewards to attract more people to them.

For Harrowstorms, I would say the following:
1) Decrease the health of all minibosses and pikes.
2) Minibosses spawn rate increases as number of players increase.
3) When spirits interact with the pikes they heal it based on how many players are there (zero heal if soloing)
4) Final boss get its health decided depending on number of people present
5) Rewards don't change depending on player count, and should still be better than they are now.

For Dragons:
1) Give a (good) bonus reward for the first dragon you kill every day (Like the random dungeon rewards)
2) Add more rare consumable rewards, (e.g. blue+ crafting mats, furnishing mats)

In general for World Events:
1) Make the daily quest for world events be a quest you pick up once, and then can turn in multiple times (max once per day). Essentially it stays the same as it is now, except you don't have to pick up the quests again.This means that players are more likely to join in, and not think "Ah, actually i'll do it later when i have the quest")

Ekzorka · October 2020

Raideen wrote: »

But if you need to do them on an alt, or if someone is new to the game, its extremely time consuming to try and get a group together.

Because it's a GROUP content. If you want to clear a group content you have to take someone else and learn boss mechanics. If you don't want to make efforts for this, then just leave it, there are a lot of content that's not requires more skills. When I was a noob I understood that group content requires time and effort and I avoided it.

Raideen wrote: »

We started working it thinking more would show...nothing, we had to abandon it because we could not complete the harrowstorm with the two of us. This is CURRENT content and just ONE day after the end of the event and that zone went from being busy with people everywhere to nothing, I mean nothing.

It was obviously that population went down after this event. Not everything can be easy. If you really need these storms you have to prepare for them, maybe craft some tri-stat potions, call someone.

MirandaSharp · October 2020

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The people who claim to want this do not spend any amount of appreciable time at this content. They are in trials and dungeons farming things that are worth farming and that they can't just buy. They are not using it. They want this stuff in theory alone. They do not want to spend real and consistent time with it.

Meanwhile people who want to play Overland content can go literally hours and sometimes days before they can clear this content. The rewards for that content become scarce and overpriced.

It's a nightmare. Please stop with content like Harrowstorms and Dragons, instead scale the content difficulty based on who is using it .

I'd like to have a difficulty setting for overland questing, like in skyrim. My main character will just rush through delves and quests without feeling as much as a tickle from the enemies. Only decent overland enemies are the world bosses in the latest zones... Those are the only overland enemies I bother with for my main character. I have a few low level ones that are still fun to play for questing. It's just a shame I can't get that same experience with my main any more.

Dusk_Coven · October 2020

Genshin Impact isn't even a month old and it's grossed over 100 million. https://www.siliconera.com/mihoyo-has-grossed-over-100-million-in-genshin-impact-earnings/

And it's single player with co-op opt in. No PvP. Not even world chat so there's literally no toxic interactions in-game unless you are grouped.
But people want to play this "single player MMO" and it's a model that can make money.

Forcing people to play together in any form is clearly out of fashion and just ends up making dead content you have to trick people into re-grinding. On top of that there's toxicity to be found in all group content here in ESO -- dungeons, trials, PvP...

craybest · October 2020

I mean, dragons and harrowstorms are probably the only content that can't be soloed or with very small groups. Most of the overland content can be done either solo or with a 4 people party.

Slyclone · October 2020

There is definitely some rewards I want but cannot attain without paying 2 to 4 million gold for it. Most of it really NOT easy to get. But I can't stand people so I am stuck farming nodes and doing public dungeons for another year to get those rewards.

I'd rather pay cash and take a year off farming.

Please.

Raideen · October 2020

Ekzorka wrote: »

Because it's a GROUP content. If you want to clear a group content you have to take someone else and learn boss mechanics. If you don't want to make efforts for this, then just leave it, there are a lot of content that's not requires more skills. When I was a noob I understood that group content requires time and effort and I avoided it.

The content was designed to down as a group, not designed with the idea that someone needs to form a raid first for 30 minutes to an hour to down the content. The terrible rewards are proof of this.

The issue currently, as is evident in game if you visit any one of these events, is that the player base is not large enough for this content. It took me an hour and a half today to get three dragons down. It took 30 minutes to get someone to help with one of the harder world bosses.

These events are balanced for the rush of players that come when the DLC/expansion is released. The issue that players like the OP have been pointing out since...well a long time now, is that once a new DLC/expansion comes out, there are few people left to do this "older" content.

Ekzorka wrote: »

It was obviously that population went down after this event. Not everything can be easy. If you really need these storms you have to prepare for them, maybe craft some tri-stat potions, call someone.

It's not about being easy, its about being doable. I am frankly offended by your comment "If you really need these storms", its part of the game I paid for. Part of an MMO and the job of the game studio is to populate the game with players. Other game companies go back and nerf large group content so that it can be done by players who desire to do the content once a new expansion comes out. ZOS is the only game studio who does not go back and modify existing content to pacify the lower player base.

Raideen · October 2020

renne wrote: »

Raideen wrote: »

The OP is correct. If someone is trying to do dragons right now the likely chance is that there will be few to no people there working on them. Folks have moved on. But if you need to do them on an alt, or if someone is new to the game, its extremely time consuming to try and get a group together.

Heck, ONE DAY after this last event, my GF and I went to solitude to do dailies. Got to the Harrowstorm...no one there. We started working it thinking more would show...nothing, we had to abandon it because we could not complete the harrowstorm with the two of us. This is CURRENT content and just ONE day after the end of the event and that zone went from being busy with people everywhere to nothing, I mean nothing. Even farming was easy, no one out there farming.

I commented to my GF that I don't think the games population on PCNA is as healthy as we are expected to believe, I even wonder how many during the event were bots. It was utterly dismal.

Ohh, this was between 12:00pm central and 4:00pm central.

That there's no one grinding the stuff they were grinding for the event immediately after the event ended is hardly a shock. Everyone is sick of grinding harrowstorms at the moment, places are ALWAYS much emptier immediately after an event because everyone is sick of doing the stuff they've spent extra time doing. Population enough to do harrowstorm builds back up, like any of these things. I know myself the last thing I want to look at right now is a harrowstorm because I spent so much time on them during the event.

There are absolutely still people doing dragons right now. I log on in the middle of the night in the US because I'm in Australia, and on PS4 which would have an even smaller population than PC I can easily get the dragon dailies done.

I did dragons today and it took over an hour and half to kill three of them. There simply were few people in the zone today, just like yesterday and hte day before and the day before that and like there will not be tomorrow.

Its inexcusable to balance content for the release of an expansion and not revisit for a balance pass after a new expansion comes out.

As far as Harrowstorms...they went from doable to nonexistent IMMEDIATELY after the event was over, and here we are 7 days later and they are still dead. I 100% doubt they will ever get back to a "normal" state that are doable throughout most of the day. The really sad part of this whole issue is that this is current content.

In fact, the free ESO+ event (from a marketing perspective) is to drive players to the game. This itself indicates the player base could be healthier.

Everest_Lionheart · October 2020

What I find about this game is that generally things are either way over tuned or unbelievably under tuned. Even in the group content when running with guild mates it’s crazy how easy you can face roll certain content like Fronstvault or Fang Lair on normal with a good group, but go in there on vet and it’s just a pure nightmare.

Dragons and Harrowstorms are a good example of over tuned content That’s laughably easy with a medium to large size group, but if you took your average vet dungeon 4 man group to either of these overland battles you will wreck it with ease. I’ve duoed Harrowstorms before and trioed dragons. Most DLC WB’s can be duoed if you follow mechs, just takes time. There are a few WB’s in the base game that need a partner too.

It’s a shame that some of the content does die a bit because it’s fun stuff to do, but grab a guild mate or ask in zone chat and put an impromptu group together and get it done. That’s half the fun of the game sometimes. You’ve literally got nothing to lose in overland content except time if your pickup group is weak. But maybe the group is actually good and you can bang out a few other bosses along the way. You never know until you try to get one together so you may as well try.

Iarao · October 2020

xTAKISx wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

dazee wrote: »

I've not had an issue doing harrowstorms, as long as you have a few competent people there it's not hard. However I do think it will become near abandoned once the next chapter comes out, at which point it would certainly need to be adjusted to be easier to solo.

I like how harrowstorms arent faceroll easy for one person to do, but as soon as there's just not enough people they're gonna need to change.

I liked it too, until I saw what happened to Northern Elysweyr when new content came out. And what a total ghost zone it is now that Greymoor is out. Even calling out dragons and getting them to low health alone did not get me any help. Only casuals were there, and they didn't want to help. It's too hard for them. Nobody less casual was in the zone. They are off doing other things. Things worth that kind of commitment and overland content will never be it.

And since doing it solo is not a walk in the park, one mistake can easy reset all your progress when you're alone. That's fine when you wouldn't be alone. A lot less fine when content has been abandoned and the only people in the area are people who don't feel like they can be of help.

I think the answer to that is that ZoS revisits these zones or offer extra incentive loot so people are interested in doing the content again. Nerfing should not be a knee jerk reaction.

yeah people only do the content as long as the rewards are what they want. i got my cheese for dragons and i dont have any reason to do them as of now.

craybest · October 2020

The difference with other MMOs is that content scales with us in here, so there's never actually low level or obsolete content. ALL content is current because you can do things in any order. Not like in wow with has more vertical progression and old content is obsolete content in the next expac.

spartaxoxo · October 2020

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

What I find about this game is that generally things are either way over tuned or unbelievably under tuned. Even in the group content when running with guild mates it’s crazy how easy you can face roll certain content like Fronstvault or Fang Lair on normal with a good group, but go in there on vet and it’s just a pure nightmare.

Dragons and Harrowstorms are a good example of over tuned content That’s laughably easy with a medium to large size group, but if you took your average vet dungeon 4 man group to either of these overland battles you will wreck it with ease. I’ve duoed Harrowstorms before and trioed dragons. Most DLC WB’s can be duoed if you follow mechs, just takes time. There are a few WB’s in the base game that need a partner too.

It’s a shame that some of the content does die a bit because it’s fun stuff to do, but grab a guild mate or ask in zone chat and put an impromptu group together and get it done. That’s half the fun of the game sometimes. You’ve literally got nothing to lose in overland content except time if your pickup group is weak. But maybe the group is actually good and you can bang out a few other bosses along the way. You never know until you try to get one together so you may as well try.

That's okay for a daily quest or two, it's not okay for farming. And they drop a lot of loot that's meant to be farmed like the Vampire furniture recipes and alchemy mats