Accessibility

Krymsyn_Panda · August 2022

I, like others, was all for the claim of increased accessibility. The problem I'm having is nothing that has been done lately, has increased accessibility, in fact it has done the opposite. This really hinders my gameplay experience when it is no longer easy to find people to fill a trials team.

1. Account wide achievements, brought a lot of good, but was extremely detrimental to the incentive for repeat trifectas and when this was brought up it fell on deaf ears. This has not been addressed in any way. This makes the pool of players smaller. This DOES NOT increase accessibility.

2. The good thing of account wide achievements allowed me to play other characters to work towards achievements instead of being locked into only one. EXCEPT when you do things like making Nightblade tanking more difficult for no reason. The most recent heal change makes Nightblade tanking much, much weaker. This DOES NOT increase accessibility.

3. 59 people have completed Rockgrove hardmode as a tank role on PC during the latest patch. FIFTY NINE. Is this considered accessible numbers? All tanks were either a Dragonknight or a Necromancer aside from a single Sorcerer and single Warden. These classes are used because of the buffs they provide. This PTS patch vaguely tried to increase buff accessibility by increasing empower timers. This was a great change and good for new Necro tanks. Of course that was then changed weeks later as is tradition. Why were other buff durations not increased, or given new sources? The damage ceiling is where it is largely due to accessibility to buffs. Good supports give good buff uptimes. Why were the classic support buffs not taken into consideration when the PTS accessibility patch was created? I understand the battle that has raged for years over stagger not being used by tanks... and yet that is the very reason DK tanks are what you see in most team compositions and buff time is still 5 seconds. This DOES NOT increase accessibility.

4. 469 total CHARACTERS (not just players as some are repeats) have completed Rockgrove hardmode current patch on PC. This PTS patch has made many wild swings towards the core combat of the game, resulting in more changes that need to be made to lower vet content enemy health. The comment made regarding this was the health would be lowered to make content with the lower damage ceiling take JUST AS LONG as it currently does on live. At best this means STILL FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY NINE characters will be able to clear this content. This keeps the available player pool small. This DOES NOT increase accessibility.

5. 267 total CHARACTERS (again, the number of actual players is less as there are repeats) have completed Dreadsail Reef hardmode. Lowering health to make the PTS patch content similar to live content means that number stays roughly the same. Is that truly how few people are meant to clear the content that comes with the biggest content drop of the year? This is a tiny available player pool. This DOES NOT increase accessibility.

I truly wish accessibility were increased. Being able to find people to run content with can be a serious drag, and it gets worse the smaller the available pool gets. If the game were updated in a way to allow players to perform at a level to complete content that they couldn't complete before, well that would be most excellent. Please follow through on the claim of increased accessibility.

Iron_Blurr · August 2022

Finally someone is talking about completion stats and viability of certain classes in hard content.

Krymsyn_Panda · August 2022

I would love to see a comment from the dev team regarding completion stats. As a dev, I would feel awful if only a small number of people got to see the hard work I did, which is what is happening with the recent content. It feels awesome to see people actually enjoy the stuff you made, and hardmode adds entirely new mechanics like the Bahsei portal that most people will never even know exists!

1802 characters completed Kyne's Aegis HM on PC over the last patch so far. This number might even be higher as I believe it's high enough that not everyone would be on the leaderboards and therefore if it wasn't logged, it would not appear in ESO logs (my only source to this data). 1400+ did Sunspire HM. I can't understand how the two most recent pieces of content (RG and DSR) can be so drastically different in completion rates, and for the dev team to be A-OK with it.

Belegnole · August 2022

Well, that doesn't sound like good numbers at all...

Krymsyn_Panda · August 2022

I agree, those numbers are awful, and it makes it difficult to play the game when the available pool of players is tiny and rapidly dwindling. What's worse is it sounds like these numbers are what they hoped to achieve as they are always evaluating completion rates:

https://twitter.com/thefinninator/status/1556759012393291777?s=20

This patch has only widened the skill gap, especially due to medium weaving, which means even less people can complete it. A 10% HP reduction on bosses is not what will make people suddenly be capable of completing the content.

I do not want to see hard content go away because the player base has been pushed out. Please actually increase accessibility like was stated!

Necrotech_Master · August 2022

now if they excluded all of the combat changes, and then did the 10% nerf on boss health, maybe more people would complete it?

eovogtb16_ESO · August 2022

Krymsyn_Panda wrote: »

I agree, those numbers are awful, and it makes it difficult to play the game when the available pool of players is tiny and rapidly dwindling. What's worse is it sounds like these numbers are what they hoped to achieve as they are always evaluating completion rates:

https://twitter.com/thefinninator/status/1556759012393291777?s=20

This patch has only widened the skill gap, especially due to medium weaving, which means even less people can complete it. A 10% HP reduction on bosses is not what will make people suddenly be capable of completing the content.

I do not want to see hard content go away because the player base has been pushed out. Please actually increase accessibility like was stated!

That is such a sad twitter post after seeing these numbers decline on esologs every patch its obviously a lie.

Klingenlied · August 2022

eovogtb16_ESO wrote: »

Krymsyn_Panda wrote: »

I agree, those numbers are awful, and it makes it difficult to play the game when the available pool of players is tiny and rapidly dwindling. What's worse is it sounds like these numbers are what they hoped to achieve as they are always evaluating completion rates:

https://twitter.com/thefinninator/status/1556759012393291777?s=20

This patch has only widened the skill gap, especially due to medium weaving, which means even less people can complete it. A 10% HP reduction on bosses is not what will make people suddenly be capable of completing the content.

I do not want to see hard content go away because the player base has been pushed out. Please actually increase accessibility like was stated!

That is such a sad twitter post after seeing these numbers decline on esologs every patch its obviously a lie.

Kinda sad actually. Compared to other MMO's though, ESO has a hard to pick up combat system. Not that this is too bad by itself - the combat system is overall loved by the community, rightly so. It just could look better, animation work is bad.
However, when you now add to this combat system the requirement of 12 people for raid content (thats +4 compared to like Final Fantasy XIV, so 4 people more where you try your best until even the last one stops making mistakes) and the "next level challenge" - buffs. Managing and timing a variety of buffs, adjusting your sets to achieve the perfect setups for your raid - that is what can be considered pretty "extreme" already. How many people will ever have access to all the possible best gear for different scenarios? Some will of course, but not many.

So of course, designing content around the top of the top that not only are very skilled and experienced, but generally can spend a lot of time farming everything required - and there is a lot that is required - will always keep this kind of content very exclusive.

Besides - and it seems people to very often forget this: It is one thing to parse well. It is a whole other dimension of effort to play in a highly active progression raid team that aims for hardmodes or trifecta. This generally is very far removed from anything remotely casual.

It is sad that the coolest mechanics are reserved for a handful of players only.

Necrotech_Master · August 2022

Klingenlied wrote: »

eovogtb16_ESO wrote: »

Krymsyn_Panda wrote: »

I agree, those numbers are awful, and it makes it difficult to play the game when the available pool of players is tiny and rapidly dwindling. What's worse is it sounds like these numbers are what they hoped to achieve as they are always evaluating completion rates:

https://twitter.com/thefinninator/status/1556759012393291777?s=20

This patch has only widened the skill gap, especially due to medium weaving, which means even less people can complete it. A 10% HP reduction on bosses is not what will make people suddenly be capable of completing the content.

I do not want to see hard content go away because the player base has been pushed out. Please actually increase accessibility like was stated!

That is such a sad twitter post after seeing these numbers decline on esologs every patch its obviously a lie.

Kinda sad actually. Compared to other MMO's though, ESO has a hard to pick up combat system. Not that this is too bad by itself - the combat system is overall loved by the community, rightly so. It just could look better, animation work is bad.
However, when you now add to this combat system the requirement of 12 people for raid content (thats +4 compared to like Final Fantasy XIV, so 4 people more where you try your best until even the last one stops making mistakes) and the "next level challenge" - buffs. Managing and timing a variety of buffs, adjusting your sets to achieve the perfect setups for your raid - that is what can be considered pretty "extreme" already. How many people will ever have access to all the possible best gear for different scenarios? Some will of course, but not many.

So of course, designing content around the top of the top that not only are very skilled and experienced, but generally can spend a lot of time farming everything required - and there is a lot that is required - will always keep this kind of content very exclusive.

Besides - and it seems people to very often forget this: It is one thing to parse well. It is a whole other dimension of effort to play in a highly active progression raid team that aims for hardmodes or trifecta. This generally is very far removed from anything remotely casual.

It is sad that the coolest mechanics are reserved for a handful of players only.

when i played city of heroes and they added incarnate trials, those would require as much as 24 players lol (a "single team" equivalent in that game was 8, so 24 players was 3 teams worth)

...but you know what they had over ESO trials? ...a trial finder queue lol

Krymsyn_Panda · August 2022

I'd be all for a trial finder down the road, but with less than 500 people actually completing the HM of the latest trials, some accessibility really needs to be addressed before the finder would be feasible.

In the current state the finder would just group people not ready for the difficulty that the trials are currently tuned to, and would result in frustration and people choosing not to experience that again.

I worry that increasing player numbers in harder content is not actually a goal though, based on the tweet I linked above, and more so the fact that incentives for doing hard content has remained terrible, despite lots of feedback.

One of the most common complaint threads on the forums is about fake tanks in normal dungeons, because there is no incentive to run vet dungeons. Why do vet random dungeons not provide better rewards? The DLC dungeons have gotten progressively harder, and yet the rewards are not worth the time investment compared to base game dungeons. I am presuming here, but I'm sure they have the analytics on how often DLC pledges are run, and I would be very confident in saying it's far, far less. Why do they not encourage players to do this content? Give more transmutes, more keys, anything really. Add a second DLC pledge giver. All these simple things have been overlooked for years.

The game encourages vet content to be unplayed, and it's too bad, because I would like more people to play with.

cicisch · August 2022

I echo most everything of what Panda has said here and agree that a trial finder is not in our best interest at this time. There are too many checks that the community would want implemented, especially support side, to make sure content is at least clearable. Something like a group builder (similar to how you can build groups in Lost Ark) would be preferred over a group finder that could result in frustration and even smaller pools to do trials with.

I have asked myself often what content the team has in mind when they address accessibility because that varies widely. Do they want vet DLC content to be more accessible on all levels, or only non-HM? Are they just trying to make high parse numbers more achievable for everyone?

True accessibility is going to come from better teaching tools and better incentives to clear content. The current rewards system leaves a lot to be desired to get players to keep playing beyond that first achievement tick. Everything in the game is finite at this moment in time due to improvements of quality of life - which are not bad things by themselves! Stickerbook is great in terms of respect to player time.

The game can absolutely make its content more accessible at all levels, but as I've stated in other spots, the current iteration of PTS is not the best way to go about this because it is ultimately harming all players. I think there needs to be a holistic discussion about what the game is lacking from the perspective of a new player, mid-tier players, and endgame players. Until that occurs, accessibility is unfortunately just going to be a token phrase and not actually practiced in game.

keto3000 · September 2022

@Dottzgaming has just released an awesome Youtube vid:

SOLVING ESO'S ACCESSIBILITY PROBLEM

He offers 2 highly practical (IMHO) solutions to Accessiblity of content, especially amongst the intermediate level of players.

Several of the points he addresses have indeed been brought up in different posts by many others, but I feel he presents the issues here in a calm & clear manner.

He offers definitive, simple to implement solutions to greatly enhance a more progressive learning ladder throughout mid game experience.

It's worth watching the whole vid til the end before commenting.

ENJOY!

Cheers,
keto

merms · September 2022