Estin wrote: »

To address difficulty, I do feel like there should be some minor adjustments, but I do think people are forgetting that the night market isn't going be like this on live. I am somewhat expecting for 50-100 players allowed in the public instance at a time, which means the bosses are going to die in under a minute with a massive amount of healing and shields being thrown out. There will also be no mobs around since players will burn them in seconds. Everybody will pretty much informally group up by following a zerg or act like it's alikr dolmens by pressing x to form them. It will be like Imperial City during mayhem vs the rest of the year. IC is filled with too many monsters most of the year, but during mayhem the monsters are pretty much always cleared out.

Adding onto this, I do like how fast the trash respawn and that you can see the progress of spawning the Argent bosses via the braziers, I think it will help. But you also don't know which one's dead until you get there, so if there's a group ahead of you killing the bosses you might have to camp out at a boss. I know a ZOS employee mentioned the population cap being lower than usual, are we able to be privy to that information? I think it's important for knowing what sense of scale we're looking at in the big picture.

Soarora wrote: »

Estin wrote: »

To address difficulty, I do feel like there should be some minor adjustments, but I do think people are forgetting that the night market isn't going be like this on live. I am somewhat expecting for 50-100 players allowed in the public instance at a time, which means the bosses are going to die in under a minute with a massive amount of healing and shields being thrown out. There will also be no mobs around since players will burn them in seconds. Everybody will pretty much informally group up by following a zerg or act like it's alikr dolmens by pressing x to form them. It will be like Imperial City during mayhem vs the rest of the year. IC is filled with too many monsters most of the year, but during mayhem the monsters are pretty much always cleared out.

Adding onto this, I do like how fast the trash respawn and that you can see the progress of spawning the Argent bosses via the braziers, I think it will help. But you also don't know which one's dead until you get there, so if there's a group ahead of you killing the bosses you might have to camp out at a boss. I know a ZOS employee mentioned the population cap being lower than usual, are we able to be privy to that information? I think it's important for knowing what sense of scale we're looking at in the big picture.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_Finn an good point was made here what is the population CAP going to be per instance?????

This thread honestly reminds me why I sometimes dislike the casual eso community so heavily.

People try to solo content designed to be played as a group and then complain it's too difficult...like ye that's the point. For me that's just a sign that the combat-/encounter design team did a good job and created something with good design. I for once is very exciting to get something like the Night Market and god forbid we gonna neuter it because some solo players can't waddle through it like it's an average public dungeon. As some others pointed out (and my initial thoughts after testing it on PTS), it will most likely become the opposite issue where things die too fast when more people play it on live.

My main feedback is that it's a bit unclear on how to unlock fragments, keys etc.

Enemoriana wrote: »

While it's true that Market on live would be much more populated than on pts, I want to remind of one problem with "there will be enough players to melt anything": time.
Market wouldn't be equally populated 24/7. I don't know how it is on other servers, maybe the players are distributed more evenly, but PC EU has clear peak time, when there really could be a lot of players in market districts (and there will be try-to-hit-the-boss problem in first days especially), and it is much less populated in other hours.
There was Imperial City as an example - and even during events there are dead hours, when you can go through all IC and meet only one or two players (that's time I usually do dailies there - and have quite a lot of cases not being killed even once... while it takes only 2–3 player hits to kill me).
And there are three separate districts.
I can adjust my plans so that I can play at any time and find best density hours, but many can't. So anybody playing not in prime time and especially not in prime time closer to event end, will not be able to rely on "there will be a lot of players".

When there are a lot of players, strength of mobs means nothing - they will be melted anyway, no matter if they have 1, 200k or 1 million hp. When there are not - Market would be unplayable for many, including races, enigmas and simple dailies like "kill X mobs".
Talking about solo players is not about "want to do everything solo", it's about "no reason to go there without guaranteed group". Now many players can do nothing without group. What is needed - to be able to do at least minimal things. To participate in event, even if you don't have friends or a guild and even if you don't play in prime time.

expecting to solo an world boss like in pve now is the issue here overland has been eazy mode for so long players forget VR overland and VET CRAG you DIDNT EXPECT TO solo an WORLD BOSS you WORKED UP TO BEING ABLE TO BY DYING TO THEM AND LEARNING !!!!! why does everyone want EVERYTHING to be EAZY MODE in eso ???????

the parch skirmish event drops the wrong splinter. it drops "parch's glass splinter" instead of "ritual's glass splinter" plz fix asap so ppl can enter the new trial.

.

Estin wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Enemoriana wrote: »

While it's true that Market on live would be much more populated than on pts, I want to remind of one problem with "there will be enough players to melt anything": time.
Market wouldn't be equally populated 24/7. I don't know how it is on other servers, maybe the players are distributed more evenly, but PC EU has clear peak time, when there really could be a lot of players in market districts (and there will be try-to-hit-the-boss problem in first days especially), and it is much less populated in other hours.
There was Imperial City as an example - and even during events there are dead hours, when you can go through all IC and meet only one or two players (that's time I usually do dailies there - and have quite a lot of cases not being killed even once... while it takes only 2–3 player hits to kill me).
And there are three separate districts.
I can adjust my plans so that I can play at any time and find best density hours, but many can't. So anybody playing not in prime time and especially not in prime time closer to event end, will not be able to rely on "there will be a lot of players".

When there are a lot of players, strength of mobs means nothing - they will be melted anyway, no matter if they have 1, 200k or 1 million hp. When there are not - Market would be unplayable for many, including races, enigmas and simple dailies like "kill X mobs".
Talking about solo players is not about "want to do everything solo", it's about "no reason to go there without guaranteed group". Now many players can do nothing without group. What is needed - to be able to do at least minimal things. To participate in event, even if you don't have friends or a guild and even if you don't play in prime time.

expecting to solo an world boss like in pve now is the issue here overland has been eazy mode for so long players forget VR overland and VET CRAG you DIDNT EXPECT TO solo an WORLD BOSS you WORKED UP TO BEING ABLE TO BY DYING TO THEM AND LEARNING !!!!! why does everyone want EVERYTHING to be EAZY MODE in eso ???????

I can solo vet DLC dungeons, so I can definitely say the night market is overtuned for a lower population. There's just too many adds around which is what makes it feel like its difficult. Like I said, my biggest complaint was another 30m boss crashing the primary bosses needed to obtain splinters by spamming add spawns. Even when there were 5-7 people around, something that could be expected during non peak times a month or two into the event, it was an extreme pain. If splinters aren't a guaranteed drop, the event wouldn't be worth doing with that many people around. I would honestly skip it even though I can do it. The content is clearly meant to be balanced around more a lot of people, and that's absolutely fine, they don't need to change anything how it is currently when the expected amount of players are around. They just need to scale it back when there's nobody there like with other world events. That's far from asking for an easy mode. That's just asking for it to be playable in that scenario.

If it was instanced content I would agree. However since this is overland and the wildcard variable of active population, I have to disagree. The fact that with practice and a proper solo build can even solo night market add packs right -now- is way more than enough lenience.

code65536 wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Have we not learned from things like Dragons and Harrowstorms that making content like that doesn't work long-term for average players?

For everyone who is concerned about the difficulty, there are two things that I think are worth considering:

First, I'm not sure what populations will look like on Live. On PTS, I tested it mostly with a small group of friends, with randoms joining in here and there. We're talking about most there being only half a dozen players at each encounter. But what will population levels look like on Live? I wrote the following a while back in a different thread: "Try to kill a dragon solo? Good luck, that's a long and difficult slog that most players can't do. Try to kill a dragon during a zone event? Good luck trying to tag it with a hit before it dies in 15s."

While many people in this thread are worried about the difficulty being too high, I suspect that on Live, people might be dealing with the opposite problem: that with too many players things die too fast and that there might even be questions about whether or not people get loot (we never had enough people around on PTS to see if there was a 12-person loot cap).

And along those lines, I doubt that grouping will be an issue since with more people swarming around, there won't be a need to formally group up.

Second, I don't think "long-term" is particularly relevant, because this is an "event zone". It'll be up for a limited time and then it will go away. And I suspect that this goes hand-in-hand with how they've tuned the difficulty: by making it a limited-time engagement, they concentrate the population so that the place will likely be swarming with people during the "event".

I have a feeling that what people see on PTS can be a bit mis-representative because of the low PTS population, and that it will more closely resemble what happens during a typical zone event on Live.

I want to quote this again even though others already have because it's absolutely right.

On live this content won't be a problem for solo/inexperienced players. There will be a ton of players in there. Personally, I'm going to enjoy the pts experience while it lasts.

I'm curious as to how phasing is going to work here if at all?

If this is indeed event format and a chunk of the server is crammed into the zone then I suspect everything is just going to get zerg'd down like the Writhing Wall. I've only meaningfully interacted with the Brazen as I can't do much solo against anything harder without building around them, but from what I'm seeing they will get stomped by a large group of randoms just faceplanting into them. The damage is high but there isn't really anything that will wipe the entire group. But maybe that's ok though as they're apparently meant to be farmed? IDK.

Large group content needs to be designed for this mechanically (Guild Wars 2 does a good job of this), high health and damage isn't really enough.

It would be cool if there was something client-side to make difficulty variable. Maybe the night market patrons can give us modifiers to make these fights harder or easier and that'll increase or decrease our favor gain?

How do you feel about the distribution of rewards during this event zone?
I haven't looked much into the rewards, so wont comment on it just yet.

How have you found the difficulty of the Night Market? Please provide any additional context to the difficulty ratings below.
Easy
Well-balanced
Difficult
Too difficult

I would say well-balanced. The bosses offer a really nice challenge for soloing, being both punishing but once you learn the mechanics and have a solid build together, they are soloable. For groups, I would say they are really well balanced for a smaller group of players (4-ish players), but I fear that once the group size increases, the fights will drop in difficulty and enjoyment significantly. If there was a way to make the boss HP scale with the number of players around, that would be amazing.
Additionally I really like how punishing dying in the zone is, while not being too restrictive. It's a really good middle group between a dungeon/trial fight where you cannot resurrect yourself at all and an overland fight where dying means absolutely nothing since you can just get up immediately. It will take people time to get used to actually resurrecting and waiting for others to resurrect you, because running back to the boss might not be possible alone. This also makes having a healer a lot more important, which to me is a really good thing.

Did you play Night Market solo, with a random group, or an organized group (friends/guild members)?
Mainly solo, but also in a groups of 2-5 players.

How did you enjoy the Event Zone? As this is a new event type, we would like to get any positives and negatives.
I really like it. It's a lot more difficult than any overland content before, which was a big positive surprise.

Did you try the different activities? If so, did you like them? Please let us know whatever you think worked and what missed the mark.
I have only so far tested the overland content, as I've not yet completed the grind for the dungeons and mini trial

How do you like the new Patrons?
Yes

Did anything not function to your expectations?
Access to the dungeons and mini trial. Don't get me wrong, I actually like that there is a requirement to enter the instanced content. I'm sure many others wont agree with on this and that's completely fine, but working towards unlocking the group content feels really nice and gives me a reason to interact with the overland content with my friends. More on the grind below ↓

Do you have any other general feedback?
The grind to unlock the group content feels like a bit too much. Having to organize a run just to access the content everyone is there to actually do, only to then run into an RNG farm where some players are done with the grind much faster than other simply due to luck doesn't sound exciting. Another problem I ran into were the quests. It feels super annoying to have different quests and not being able to share them with your groupmates and on top of that and when you all actually have the quests the progress wont be shared with the group. This caused a lot of unnecessary friction when trying to do multiple quests at once as a group.

> How do you feel about the distribution of rewards during this event zone?

I am concerned about gameplay-impacting rewards being locked behind factions. The monster helmets, for example. If a certain monster helmet becomes meta, aren't people going to bandwagon the same faction? A faction should be mostly lore-flavor and cosmetics, not anything that affects gear stats and is exclusive.

> How have you found the difficulty of the Night Market? Please provide any additional context to the difficulty ratings below.

For a solo player it's difficult, but that seems intended

> Did you play Night Market solo, with a random group, or an organized group (friends/guild members)?

Solo

> How did you enjoy the Event Zone? As this is a new event type, we would like to get any positives and negatives.

The zone looks great. Roleplaying wise, it's very polished.

> Did you try the different activities? If so, did you like them? Please let us know whatever you think worked and what missed the mark.

I tried the first quest about the wards, but I died and couldn't res on the spot, so I logged off. There's nothing particularly wrong with the content, but clearly I can't progress alone, so I didn't bother.

> How do you like the new Patrons?

The leaders of the factions are fine.

> Did anything not function to your expectations?

So far I haven't found anything game breaking.

> Do you have any other general feedback?

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what the faction system serves. In a game like New World, factions take over towns so that they unlock PvE bonuses and conveniences. I'm not really sure about the specifics, but there would be times where it was like "Only members of a faction can interact with this station." They can also wage war against each other. I'm guessing something similar would happen for the Night Market, but without a PvP element, it just seems arbitrary and a duplication of the Alliance system.

TheMrPancake wrote: »

I managed to duo one of the wandering bosses with 25m health. I tanked it, just holding block, rolling aoes and chaining the infinitely respawning trash packs around us without any prior knowledge of the mechanics.

I had no external heals (let alone a full healer) meaning my only sources of survival were runeguard and hardened ward.

With a group of twelve, or even more, I would be very surprised if such bosses lasted more than a handful of seconds.

It's likely too late to add new mechanics et cetera, but some extra weapon damage on the bosses would be great because they don't feel very strong at the moment when on a tank setup.

I wrote earlier in the thread, "the mechanics, while they exist, don't actually challenge players", "extra health and extra damage doesn't make for a satisfying form of difficulty", and "it becomes considerably easier if you have a tank in your group", and I thank you for providing a concrete example of what I meant by all that.

I had said all those things because I went into this comparing the Night Market with a typical DLC dungeon, and I did that because the reason we're not getting DLC dungeons this year is because of the Night Market. The Night Market is, effectively, what ZOS replaced this year's DLC dungeons with.

I too have duo-killed bosses with just a DD friend and me on a tank (I'm a tank main, so I'm doing everything in Night Market with a tank--me!), and it was a long tedious slog because it had a lot of health. And it did enough damage that I think I would not have wanted to fight it without a tank. I'm 99% sure that the people complaining in this thread about difficulty have no tank in the group, and without a tank, yes, I would consider it to be overtuned. But once you have a full tank, the encounters are pretty straightforward--and frankly boring.

That's because the mechanics are pretty superficial. Roksa's Darklight Orbs spawn so close that I can just reach over and bash them without taking a step. The Balorgh shades just harass you and don't actually kill you if they catch you like they do in the dungeon.

But here's the problem: in a dungeon instance, you know you'll have 4 players so you can give things enough health that make the encounters last just the right amount of time--not too long, not too short--for a typical 4-person group. You know that there will be a tank, so you can make things hit hard enough to make that tank sweat. You know that there will be (or at least there should be) a healer so you can add heal-check mechanics that the tank can't self-heal out of. And, most importantly, you have selectable difficulty levels so you can balance that content for a wide spectrum of player skill levels.

But you have none of that here. These things need to be one-size-fits-all. Which means that, while things hit hard enough that you really want a tank esp. if you're just a duo, it can't hit hard enough that you need a tank; i.e., it can't hit so hard a tank goes from "really nice to have" to "absolutely required, even if there are a lot of you there". And you definitely can't have things hitting so hard that you need both a tank and a healer. You need enough boss health that it doesn't just melt too quickly when it's on Live and there's a big crowd, but then that means the fight is long and dragged out when it's just two people, and if you do get a big crowd (and if it's a big crowd of experienced players), that fight is probably still going to be too short. And mechanics. You can't make the mechanics as difficult and punishing as what you'd see in a DLC dungeon because there's no way for the player to choose between normal, veteran, and hard mode. So, again, they have to pick a kind of middle ground, where the mechanics are there, but they can't be nearly as punishing and exacting as what you'd get in a DLC HM because this content needs to be doable by everyone, not just the dungeon-trifecta-collecting crowd.

In this sort of "open world" format, the only real difficulty selector is who you're doing the encounter with. But that's something that most players have little or no control over. A typical player will want there to be other players, but it's not like they have a lot of control over that, if they have no friends or guildmates that they can readily call upon. During prime time, there could be a big zerg, probably with a tank somewhere in that zerg, and they can just tag along and things will be a comfortable difficulty level for them, but if they work weird hours and can only log on when the place is quiet, they could have a hard time finding enough people to take down a boss, esp. if none of the people around are tanks. On the other end, a hardcore player who is excited about the challenge of tackling these bosses solo will probably be frustrated by all the people rushing in and spoiling their fun.

In any case, this is why I don't like this format and why I think that this format is fundamentally, a priori flawed and can never deliver the kinds of well-tuned experiences from classic dungeon instances. In general everyday life, "one-size-fits-all" usually means people on both ends being unhappy, and the Night Market is no exception.

But it's done, and me whining about this format isn't useful for anyone. Just... please, in the future, there is a reason why classic instanced content with selectable difficulty and assigned roles have worked so damned well over the years.

TheMrPancake wrote: »

Contrary to some of the messages in this thread I think that the bosses need a buff.

TL;DR: you shouldn't do that.

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Hey folks, good feedback once again. Some more notes for you all to ponder and put into practice.

- Population Cap: The current cap per instance of Night Market is roughly 36 players. That number is a bit fluid based on how we manage population caps but thats about the target we are shooting for.
- Event Zone: This is a limited time zone which will only be up for a certain amount of time. We DO plan to bring it back and its built into the design of faction choice, etc. as we know the initial release will not allow you to complete everything but as it re-emerges choosing a different faction is incentivized.
- Factions: It is a balancing act for sure that we wanted factions to have some benefit but we also did not want them to be complete limiter for people playing together. Even when grouped with friends of different factions, there are aspects that will still only potentially benefit your faction without being a detriment to group. Killing Faceted enemies is a good example.
- Difficulty: As mentioned before, this is very much a key area we are keeping an eye on as testing continues. There is a lot of time between PTS and when you will see Night Market reach the live servers so we have a lot of data to comb through and make tweaks as necessary.
- Relics and Keys needed for Gilded and Opulent: This is a good topic to keep providing feedback on. Relic requirements will remain because, as players get into Gilded and Opulent instances, they will see that the relics can sometimes play a part in there, in particular in the Opulent Ordeal which requires you have all the relics to complete. Key requirements as designed are limiting and we realize that so the feedback on that core loop, how it feels, fun factor, etc. will greatly help us in determing tweaks there.

Again, thanks for all the feedback and keep it coming. Next PTS will see some things "unlocked" (bags with Relic Splinters, no key requirements for Gilded/Opulent, etc) so feedback for those specific features will be great to see as well.

You stated you did not want to divide the player base. It is happening right here. When you have players clearly sating that they don't like a group or don't like a solo, you have a division problem. When you make solo content, groups can play it. When you make group content, solos cannot play it. This segregates the players and creates aggression. It is happening right here in this thread and it IS happening in the game. Members who prefer solo cannot make statements of their interest without being attacked in the threads so you are not going to hear how they feel about the process.

The event will not be fine when it goes live. Group players will crowd the event first 2 days and anyone who has a job or rl responsibilities that bring them in later will find the event dead. The only way it will stay active throughout is if the experience is high or there is is a CHANCE to get something, like leads or parts to a asset. Then the event will be like the dolmen in the Alik'r Desert with a constant flow of over-population that results in no player getting a fun experience from the fight.

If you want to add challenge without breaking the game, scaling is the answer. If you want to divide your player base and chase off the solo-runners, forcing groups is the good path for it.

--Emphasis added.

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

- Population Cap: The current cap per instance of Night Market is roughly 36 players. That number is a bit fluid based on how we manage population caps but thats about the target we are shooting for.

Thank you! That’s around where my guess was.
Theoretically, I don’t think we’ll see the problem of full burning bosses then. At least not until power creep gets them. Since each district is essentially split in half, we can assume half players will be in each half, either by having done the other half or just by going right or left from entrance. That’s 18 people per half. Then there’s some people who might be doing the minigames, or fighting the calamitious boss while others are fighting the brazen/argent bosses, or the faceted boss, and suddenly there’s not a huge group standing at the boss spawn points like we see with overland events.

That said, I still don’t see finding a group to follow as being a problem since people could sit at an oasis, sit at a boss spawn location, go to the next skirmish (super cool that we get a timer for them by the way, reminds me of GW2 world events), use the group finder, ask in the lobby, join a guild…

It could be beneficial to try and fill an instance on the PTS to see for sure though. Could do something like the first Vengence or as a community we could try to work something out.

im really happy to see your implementing something like this. A couple things i would add:

1) Player guild bonus. The open ended concept where everyone can participate is perfect for player guilds (and recruiting new players) but there should be something to provide a little extra incentive for this as well. Im not sure what kind of reward bonus would be applicable but it should be something. Player guild level mini buffs would be nice, applicable to this zone only.

2) Not all players like all content but things collected should be able to be rewarded at the faction vendor if youve collected the parts but have no intention of say doing the trial component. You should be able to turn in dungeon and trial keys/spliners whatever you need for a random chest reward or currency.

3) Surprise visits: This is a great place for inserting random daedra bosses from elsewhere in the game that dont necessarily require a group to defeat. Find these guys randomly in the map with maybe 10 possible bosses spawning anywhere on the map but only 1 or 2 actually spawned in at a time.

otherwise good job so far