I have time to play 1-2 hours per day and im probally not the only one.
Some saving needs to be implemented.

Wildberryjack wrote: »

Being able to save progress might solve the time issue. Of course that knocks you off the leaderboard but many won't care about that.

Impairing fun and functionality for a leaderboard is bad decision. I never cared for them and never will, I care for content to be fun and engaging.

Wildberryjack wrote: »

Being able to save progress might solve the time issue. Of course that knocks you off the leaderboard but many won't care about that.

I think if you have a save at say Arc 5 and then die and use all your lives you shouldnt be able to load the save at Arc 5.

XSTRONG wrote: »

I think if you have a save at say Arc 5 and then die and use all your lives you shouldnt be able to load the save at Arc 5.

There shouldn't be any threads to begin with. Or at least an option to go without leaderboard/little or no rewards. Speaking from my perspectice, I don't care for either. I only want to go there and play it until I really can't beat it.

I ran EA only once, got bored with trash stages, wiped a couple of times because I didn't swap gear (underestimated bosses a little), eventually got out of threads, and then what? I don't feel like redoing everything. It would be better if at least there were little to zero trash stages

I don’t agree with the little to no rewards part, but I do think that leaderboard progress should stop at the loss of the third thread of fate but that you should keep getting to resurrect and go endlessly as long as you want/can. And I do think there should be certain milestones spaced out along the way that once you reach one of them, when you do start over you have the option to start at that milestone instead of at the very beginning.

XSTRONG wrote: »

Purchasable 'Skip Coins' bought with the new currency in the Vendor might be an idea.

Lets say you buy 5 Skip coins and you can choose on which stages with mobs not bosses you want to use 1 coin to skip that stage or skip all mob stages and go right to the boss.

This way progressing is much faster if you are ready to spend the new currency.

Skip Coins should get more expensive the further into the dungeon you are.

My problem with this is that progression often involves dying. A lot of dying. So you would not be getting currency. So you would burn through currency buying skip coins to get to the level you keep dying on and you run out of currency/skip coins. Now you need to run the lower levels of Endless Archive again just to make more currency to ... skip the lower levels of Endless Archive. It has a hamster-on-a-wheel feel to it. Plus, really pushing myself to get deep into Endless Archive should let me buy more fun stuff from the vendors, not less. Having to spend currency to play at a higher difficulty feels like it is punishing me for challenging myself instead of encouraging me to challenge myself.

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Khajiit thinks what this needs is a save point mechanism, where every arc can be jumped to if both members in group have unlocked it already - just have a glowy portal to the start of the next arc in the starting hall. If folks want to start from scratch they can, if they want to advance, they can, if they want to start in the middle or play with someone who has not advanced as far as they have, they can.

This is a good Idea.

Also make the leaderboard optional by selection on entry like dungeon that have versions I & II. if you cannot do that now, remove leaderboards until you can.

reazea wrote: »

skinnycheeks wrote: »

Really loving the archive. The concept is insanely good. But after a few runs, I'm noticing one thing that many others that have done it a few times now are also saying...

It takes TOO long to progress through it

Each of my runs has been 3-5 hours now. That is a bit more than most want to sit down for. The # of bosses per arc feels great, but I think removing one of the non-boss stages from each cycle would go a long way. So maybe 3 stages total instead of 4 for each cycle (2 stages of adds + 1 boss = 1 cycle.) The base pop starts to feel really tedious having to do the same 3 pack formula over and over to get to the bosses.

The difficulty ramp up from arc 1 > arc 2 > arc 3 > etc. feels good I think. And through the smaller increments as well. It just takes too long to progress through them.

Also, someone tested and noticed that the bosses in the arc have a pattern of 9100, 18200, 27300, and 36400 resistances. And the Marauder's that drop in also have 36400 resistances. This is especially out of whack with the rest of the adds that accompany the Marauder as they only have 9100 resistance. So essentially you have to build for WAY over pen on all of the adds on the off chance that the Marauder drops in. I'm not sure if this is intentional but thought it was worth bringing up at least in case it isn't.

And the addition of yet another currency to the game is not needed either. There are already too many different currencies in ESO. The thought of a dungeon specific currency combined with an unrealistic, time consuming grind is *cringe*.

On the other hand there are people like me that enjoy earning currency while playing diffrent kind of content that can
be used to buy shiny stuff!

You simple just need to play the content to get the currency, cant get easier then that. And if you dont want it just leave it alone and still play the content?

maxjapank wrote: »

I don't want to hijack a thread. But I just had a couple of questions to ask:

1) Is Endless Archive intended to be done with two people? Is it possible to solo it?
2) How much time would I need to invest in getting a class gear? Is that the only reward?

You can go Solo
You can go with 1 your friend
You can go with your companion if you don't have friends

maxjapank wrote: »

I don't want to hijack a thread. But I just had a couple of questions to ask:

1) Is Endless Archive intended to be done with two people? Is it possible to solo it?
2) How much time would I need to invest in getting a class gear? Is that the only reward?

Can solo/Duo, harder to solo at higher Arcs/Levels, and the mini-bosses known as Marauders seem to be incredibly overturned at the moment requiring you to be very tanky to deal with them. Maybe a similar amount of time as completing Vateshran sticker book. Easiest way would probably be to run Arc 1 to completion and then reset the instance and avoid the difficulty spikes.

Entaro wrote: »

Maybe a similar amount of time as completing Vateshran sticker book.

Absolutely not!

One of the worst features of the Endless Archive is just how obscenely stingy they are with the rewards.

The time it would take to completed the EA stickerbook is far, far worse than for Vateshran, and maybe even Maelstrom.

There are 7 sets. Every set has all 36 slots (since they drop in all 3 armor weights). That's 252 pieces to collect.

Vateshran has 3 gear sets with 22 items each for 66 pieces. Plus the 16 arena weapons (4x DW, 4x 1HS, 3x 2H, 3x destro, resto, bow) (but since the dual-wield drop in pairs, for the purposes of calculating how many runs are needed, it's really only 14). The arena weapons drop alongside the gear sets on the final boss, so you'll be completing both in parallel (and at around the same time).

The time it takes to complete Arc 1 is in the same ballpark as the time it takes to complete one Vateshran run. In that Arc 1 run, you will earn only one gear piece, whereas in Vateshran, there are 7 loot opportunities for the 3 gear sets. There is the possibility of just additional 1 additional gear item from the optional content in the Arc, whereas you have multiple opportunities for optional bosses in Vateshran. If you don't limit yourself to Arc 1 and venture into Arc 2, you'll get a third loot opportunity from killing the Maurauder, but Arc 2 is going to take more time than Arc 1.

So, you have far more pieces to collect. And far fewer loot opportunities. The gear grind is by no means "similar" to that of Vateshran. It's not even on the same bloody planet.

Hell, this is even worse than Maelstrom. In Maelstrom, the weapons from the 6 gear sets (not counting arena weapons, since those are easy and fast to collect) drop only on the final boss, so it will take 90 runs to fully complete Maelstrom's stickerbook, which is considerably worse than Vateshran's.

Let's say you are running just the first two Arcs in EA: that's 5 loot opportunities (assuming you do all the side content and are able to actually complete the quest if you get the quest and you successfully kill the Maurauder), so it'll take over 50 Arc1+2 runs. But the time it takes to do Arc1+2 is roughly twice the time it takes to waltz through nMA (if you're just going for stickerbook completion, you will need only 14 vet runs to complete all the arena weapons, after which point you only need to run normal for the remaining stickerbook, so most of a Maelstrom stickerbook farm would be on normal, if you're going for expediency).

And at 10K currencies for just a single curated item (and you won't be earning currencies at a decent non-pittance rate until you get to the later arcs, but, again, that's time-consuming), they might as well not figure into your equation. Even for the cheaper non-curated coffers, it'll take about two runs of Arc 1 to get enough currency to buy a single uncurated coffer.

So, yea, the reward structure in week 1 of PTS is pretty insulting and anyone looking to complete stickerbook will need to have copious amounts of time to waste.

Cycle bosses need to be changed so that they drop gear too. Limiting gear to the Tho'at is absurd and disrespectful of the player's time.

code65536 wrote: »

Cycle bosses need to be changed so that they drop gear too. Limiting gear to the Tho'at is absurd and disrespectful of the player's time.

As usual I agree with you.

When I killed the first boss and got a green rubedite greatsword, 1 soulgem and some gold I thought the rewards were bugged

Some Hard Core players want the content crazy hard, but for noobs or even more lay back players. We want easy or middle easy content that is fun. We do not want crazy hard content to make the 1%'ers happy who want crazy hard content.

There is no normal or vet version.

I haven't tried it yet-- and I didn't read every post here, so apologies if this was already suggested-- but as far as being able to skip early arcs, that might not be allowed as long as it's for the leaderboard (for standardization reasons).

So maybe there could be an option upon starting to try for the leaderboard or not, and if it isn't for the leaderboard then have an option to begin with a particular arc that the character has already cleared?

I suppose that would require a new per-character database field to keep track of the highest arc each character has cleared. For instance, if the character has cleared up through arc 12, maybe they could opt to start with some arc from 1 to 12?

And if two players were running it together, the highest starting arc would need to be based on the character with the lower highest-cleared number. For instance, if one character has cleared up through arc 12 but the other character has only cleared up through arc 8, then the duo would have the option to start with some arc from 1 to 8.

If one player started playing solo and then wanted to invite another player somewhere along the way, the second player's character would need to have already cleared whichever arc the first player's character is currently in.