I’m not convinced that these battle passes are a good fit for ESO.

Ingel_Riday · April 7

I mean, I get the monetary reason why ZOS is doing them. In the sense of “we need money to fund the team, pay ever-escalating server rental costs, dole out dividends to Microsoft shareholders, avoid unemployment,” and so on… sure. They fit in that sense.

But based on my experience with doing all the Week 1 tasks to completion, Tamriel Tomes are just a tedious list of exceedingly dull chores. Dull chores that have very little to do with any semblance of fun.

For point of comparison, I have bought 8 battle passes in Marvel Rivals… and I’ve always found them kind of fun. One strong contributing factor is that Marvel Rivals has a core hedgehog concept of doing the matches. Whether you’re in “competitive ranked” or “quickmatch” or “practice vs AI,” the end result is the same. You’re running matches. Everything revolves around that solid focal point (save a few cute optional mini-modes).

Since said game has such a laser focus, the developers have been able to design battle pass activities that revolve around doing things that you would naturally be doing ANYWAY. You’re going to be getting 20 critical hits, or killing 75 enemies, or doing 12 matches, or the like by just playing the game. That’s it. They’re not really chores at all. Again, you were going to do all those things ANYWAY. The Battle Pass just gives you extra motivation to log in and play the game. It feels very organic.

Oh sure, sometimes you’ll want to veer away from one kind of character to another to get some of them done in a prompter manner. Play as The Punisher to get 20 critical hits via headshots with your machine gun (which takes less than one match to achieve) or play a healer for 2 matches to get 25k healing done. But at the end of the day, you’re still doing the core activity of playing the matches. You’re doing the thing, just with your toes dipped in a slightly different player experience.

You also have plenty of alternative options. Each week’s list of battle pass activities has 12 or so possible ones to focus on and you are only expected to do six of them. Then you’re done with the weekly challenges. So if you REALLY don’t want to heal, you don’t have to. You have plenty of other things you can do to make progress… all the while enjoying the core gameplay loop. It’s a genuinely nice experience.

Tamriel Tomes… are not a nice experience. Instead of offering a diverse list of activities to participate in that enable people to earn progress by just naturally playing the game, they're just tedious nightmare filler-content. I play this game to explore, do quests, and wander the world… not to run around in circles collecting 90 wood and 90 silken cocoons. Not to camp a public dungeon event boss in Wrothgar for five minutes, kill him in thirty seconds, and then do that cycle another two times while reading a history book about the Panama Canal to stay awake. Not to be part of a herd of players corralled into the Wrothgar Overworld to pick away at 1,000 monsters, which… why? Why even design something like that? The monsters in the overworld aren't numerous enough to support the entire playerbase being funneled into instances of the zone to fulfill personal 1,000 monster kill quotas. You're creating pure tedium.

This isn’t fun. Now, in fairness, I know “fun” isn’t really the goal. Hasn’t been for a while. I mean, look: when you’re paying a monthly subscription of $149.99 per year AND buying loot crates AND sinking money into battle passes that are 50% more expensive than competitors’ battle passes while offering only a fraction of the costumes and cosmetics… you get motivated to take the time to read developer interviews. I read Matt Firor talking about “adding more things to the game to keep players busy.” BUSY. Not entertained. Not having fun. Kept BUSY. A very telling word choice. Stuck with me.

That’s what the Tamriel Tome system currently is. It’s busy work. It’s a second job that you can start when you’re done with your first one. I have 6 to 8 hours to play your game each week, tops. It would take me all that time just to keep up with these chores. Chores that are not only dull the first time, but dull the additional 2 to 5 times that I'm expected to repeat them. I could just not do them, but then I'd get behind... and I'd never catch up. I wouldn't finish the first battle pass and then the second one would drop and I wouldn't finish that one and then the third one would drop and I'd be so far in the hole that I'd never get them done (unless I pay real money for Tamriel Tome points, which I'm sure is in the works). Ugh.

In its present incarnation, I don’t think the Tamriel Tome system is a good fit for ESO. It doesn’t play to any of the game’s strengths, it doesn’t have any intuitive flow with core gameplay loops, and if this is supposed to take the place of new zones to keep us “busy” and “engaged” between major content drops so that we are retained as players… good luck with that. You’re going to burn people out.

______
As an addendum, it doesn’t help that I’m about 62 hours into the excellent Crimson Desert and loving the heck out of it. It is shockingly JARRING to go from an epic adventure replete with stunning vistas, awesome character abilities, and large-scale pitched battles to… ye olde chore list. “Another 30 ancestor silk to go. Oh, better remember to claim my daily log-in bonus of 15 tome points… because ZOS added the daily log-in bonus back into the game, only now with a far shoddier reward… because all the previous rewards are now locked behind these new chores. Stunning and brave.”

Ugh. I loved that month vacation between endeavors and this. Felt like the good ol’ days, before I apparently needed a second job ethnically-cleansing Wrothgar in order to give my kids a new pair of Raynor boots.

Ingel_Riday · April 7

Oh, as a playful follow-up... yes, I can count. :-P Marvel Rivals is on Season 7, but they started with *drum roll* Season 0.

Goofy goober stuff, but 7 seasons plus "Season 0" is 8 total seasons. Guffaw.

virtus753 · April 7

I might be purrsuaded to do some chores for cat armor, ZOS. To go on cats collected in game. No, I don’t just mean Zerith-var.

moderatelyfatman · April 7

@Ingel_Riday
It looks a lot like ZOS are trying to find a new income model after the Chapters purchases and ESO+ subscriptions dropped off in the past few years.
It looks like ZOS are looking at other games and trying out what works there e.g. last year's Seasons, this years Battle Passes.
I reckon ESO might go F2P next year.

Vaqual · April 7

From a naive and limited perspective on this, I have to say the following:
-first two weeks were already much less hassle than Endeavours for way better value
-I didn't have to micro manage event tickets based on item availability and currency cap
-I wasn't spammed with daily reward junk that will end up on a mule anyway

Monetization and content expectations aside, I find it to be very positive so far.

BretonMage · April 7

It does feel quite a bit more tedious than the endeavors system ever did. I think a lot of it is because we get a very limited range of activities with a longer time limit. But the longer time limit means little to players because there's always a compulsion to finish everything fast so that we can move on to the next thing.

Having a bigger variety of activities might help. Give us more weekly challenges to do per week, just so we aren't stuck with the same 5 activities all week. More, but shorter, challenges, perhaps?

It might also help to break the seasonal challenges into smaller stages, with a feeling of completion/achievement for each stage. I don't know exactly the best way, but it definitely feels a bit boring and unstructured right now.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · April 7

I think this is a fair system. Its free. You have the option to get premium if you choose to do so. I don't like to compare price points with other games, they are all unique and different in a far too many ways especially when it comes to budgets.

Eso having a better budget is a good thing. It means it will continue to be around and we will continue to get more content and other additions to the game.

For Eso, I think the premium is correctly priced. All of our friends and members are excited and happy about this, it gives them a reason to play together more too. They finally have a chance to obtain things many of them wanted for years like the rare skill styles. It also allows people to accomplish things at their own pace in case they cant get on every day. Or if you can only get on 1 day in a week, you wont miss out as you would have in the past.

With the old system, I never liked doing endeavors and thought they were a waste of time. The few times I did do them was to help guildies. The new system is an improvement on collecting seals. Im actually doing something I wasn't before and its already tied into the tasks at hand.

Having more freedom and choices with the currency is also a tremendous improvement! Maybe we already have what's in the event merchant and feel like spending it in the gold coast Bazaar instead. The same with the tomes, we can choose which items we want and to some degree when we receive them.

I will also add that it is a new system. Im sure they have plans to expand on this over time. Every new system has a few hiccups here and there, but it has a lot of potential! And I like that they are trying to put something in there for all playstyles, even housing!

What kind of activities are you doing that haven't been or aren't listed in the weekly tasks?

Blood_again · April 7

Maybe it is not a good fit, but profit

Umbracat449 · April 7

The daily endeavours could be fun- short, quick, doable, done. Or no biggie to ignore, another lot tomorrow. The weekly endeavours were always boring.

They kept the boring part.

flizomica · April 7

The challenges on the whole seem way too restrictive and therefore force you into that time-wasting grindy behavior. Like there isn't anything fun about standing around with 15 other players waiting for a particular world boss to respawn 5 times.

The challenges should be MUCH more generalized so that players can more naturally incorporate them into their play time. For example, why couldn't that challenge simply be to kill any world boss 5 times? Then you could get it done while doing daily WB quests or going for zone completions/achievements.

licenturion · April 7

As someone who also plays Marvel RIvals like OP, Overwatch and Call Of Duty from time to time, i fully agree.

All those games have 1 thing in common. You don't have to check what to do to progress. You just play the game and you progress one way or another.

I think the challenges for ESO are way to specific right now and I hope this can be fixed with the next season.

They had it right with golden pursuits for a year now. I have no idea why they made everything worse and more tedious. Stuff like "Complete 5 dungeons is okay". Stuff like "Complete City Of Ash 2 five times' is way to specific. Same with 'kill 1000 mobs', but "kill 1000 mobs in zone X" is meh.

BretonMage · April 7

licenturion wrote: »

They had it right with golden pursuits for a year now. I have no idea why they made everything worse and more tedious. Stuff like "Complete 5 dungeons is okay". Stuff like "Complete City Of Ash 2 five times' is way to specific. Same with 'kill 1000 mobs', but "kill 1000 mobs in zone X" is meh.

While I agree 1000 enemies in 3 zones is a bit too restrictive, I think the idea is to get players doing activities together. It adds to the community atmosphere, which can be fun.

It's just that expecting players to spend all that time (it's designed as a 3-month challenge) in only 3 zones is probably not the best idea. I think it's better as a weekly challenge: kill 200 enemies in Wrothgar, Hew's Bane or Gold Coast.

Angnos · April 7

I wish we could choose a profile at the start of the week that better suits the player. For example, a PvE profile focused on Trials, Dungeons, and Arena, with challenges specific to those activities. Or a solo casual player profile focused more on questing and exploring. The same could apply for PvP or even a Housing profile. This way, you complete challenges while naturally playing the content you enjoy, instead of waiting at a world boss or public dungeon boss and killing it five times, which just makes you feel like you’re wasting your time.

heaven13 · April 7

100% agree. Challenges should be more vague, allowing more opportunity to complete within normal gameplay.

Tome points should also be a little more standardized, if they're giving us more specific ones. Why is collecting 15 alchemical ingredients worth 10 more points per claim than collecting 15 runestones, plants, or wood? I'd honestly just rather have "Collect 15 resource nodes" as I tend to stop and pick up things as I go.

Excavate "one of these three specific antiquities" - WHY? Why can I not just excavate any purple (or blue, or green) antiquity? These are at least green level antiquities so it's not like I have to work my way through the zone green and blue to get the purple but it's then going to take up space in my inventory. But they're a good level of point rewards so if I reroll, I might get something worth half or more tedious.

And these kind of thoughts/considerations are exactly why this battlepass system is, as OP put it, just busy work. Instead of a rewarding system for playing the game.

gariondavey · April 7

Ingel_Riday wrote: »

I mean, I get the monetary reason why ZOS is doing them. In the sense of “we need money to fund the team, pay ever-escalating server rental costs, dole out dividends to Microsoft shareholders, avoid unemployment,” and so on… sure. They fit in that sense.

But based on my experience with doing all the Week 1 tasks to completion, Tamriel Tomes are just a tedious list of exceedingly dull chores. Dull chores that have very little to do with any semblance of fun.

For point of comparison, I have bought 8 battle passes in Marvel Rivals… and I’ve always found them kind of fun. One strong contributing factor is that Marvel Rivals has a core hedgehog concept of doing the matches. Whether you’re in “competitive ranked” or “quickmatch” or “practice vs AI,” the end result is the same. You’re running matches. Everything revolves around that solid focal point (save a few cute optional mini-modes).

Since said game has such a laser focus, the developers have been able to design battle pass activities that revolve around doing things that you would naturally be doing ANYWAY. You’re going to be getting 20 critical hits, or killing 75 enemies, or doing 12 matches, or the like by just playing the game. That’s it. They’re not really chores at all. Again, you were going to do all those things ANYWAY. The Battle Pass just gives you extra motivation to log in and play the game. It feels very organic.

Oh sure, sometimes you’ll want to veer away from one kind of character to another to get some of them done in a prompter manner. Play as The Punisher to get 20 critical hits via headshots with your machine gun (which takes less than one match to achieve) or play a healer for 2 matches to get 25k healing done. But at the end of the day, you’re still doing the core activity of playing the matches. You’re doing the thing, just with your toes dipped in a slightly different player experience.

You also have plenty of alternative options. Each week’s list of battle pass activities has 12 or so possible ones to focus on and you are only expected to do six of them. Then you’re done with the weekly challenges. So if you REALLY don’t want to heal, you don’t have to. You have plenty of other things you can do to make progress… all the while enjoying the core gameplay loop. It’s a genuinely nice experience.

Tamriel Tomes… are not a nice experience. Instead of offering a diverse list of activities to participate in that enable people to earn progress by just naturally playing the game, they're just tedious nightmare filler-content. I play this game to explore, do quests, and wander the world… not to run around in circles collecting 90 wood and 90 silken cocoons. Not to camp a public dungeon event boss in Wrothgar for five minutes, kill him in thirty seconds, and then do that cycle another two times while reading a history book about the Panama Canal to stay awake. Not to be part of a herd of players corralled into the Wrothgar Overworld to pick away at 1,000 monsters, which… why? Why even design something like that? The monsters in the overworld aren't numerous enough to support the entire playerbase being funneled into instances of the zone to fulfill personal 1,000 monster kill quotas. You're creating pure tedium.

This isn’t fun. Now, in fairness, I know “fun” isn’t really the goal. Hasn’t been for a while. I mean, look: when you’re paying a monthly subscription of $149.99 per year AND buying loot crates AND sinking money into battle passes that are 50% more expensive than competitors’ battle passes while offering only a fraction of the costumes and cosmetics… you get motivated to take the time to read developer interviews. I read Matt Firor talking about “adding more things to the game to keep players busy.” BUSY. Not entertained. Not having fun. Kept BUSY. A very telling word choice. Stuck with me.

That’s what the Tamriel Tome system currently is. It’s busy work. It’s a second job that you can start when you’re done with your first one. I have 6 to 8 hours to play your game each week, tops. It would take me all that time just to keep up with these chores. Chores that are not only dull the first time, but dull the additional 2 to 5 times that I'm expected to repeat them. I could just not do them, but then I'd get behind... and I'd never catch up. I wouldn't finish the first battle pass and then the second one would drop and I wouldn't finish that one and then the third one would drop and I'd be so far in the hole that I'd never get them done (unless I pay real money for Tamriel Tome points, which I'm sure is in the works). Ugh.

In its present incarnation, I don’t think the Tamriel Tome system is a good fit for ESO. It doesn’t play to any of the game’s strengths, it doesn’t have any intuitive flow with core gameplay loops, and if this is supposed to take the place of new zones to keep us “busy” and “engaged” between major content drops so that we are retained as players… good luck with that. You’re going to burn people out.

______
As an addendum, it doesn’t help that I’m about 62 hours into the excellent Crimson Desert and loving the heck out of it. It is shockingly JARRING to go from an epic adventure replete with stunning vistas, awesome character abilities, and large-scale pitched battles to… ye olde chore list. “Another 30 ancestor silk to go. Oh, better remember to claim my daily log-in bonus of 15 tome points… because ZOS added the daily log-in bonus back into the game, only now with a far shoddier reward… because all the previous rewards are now locked behind these new chores. Stunning and brave.”

Ugh. I loved that month vacation between endeavors and this. Felt like the good ol’ days, before I apparently needed a second job ethnically-cleansing Wrothgar in order to give my kids a new pair of Raynor boots.

Nice post.

I think this illustrates quite easily why mmos are dying in general. People want their time respected, and mmos do not do that. Pearl abyss rightfully and intelligently realized the direction the game industry is going and changed crimson desert from an mmo to a single player game. They have found great success in this.

I get battlepasses trying to encourage engagement with the world, however, it needs to be way more organic. There should be options for all types of gameplay as well.

I hate doing world bosses, delves, public dungeons, housing, trials, dungeons. I enjoy bgs, ic and a bit of cyro. I can stand doing some crafting dailies or the occasional survey.

If the tasks are outside of my desired area of gameplay, it feels VERY forced and extremely unenjoyable. It makes the battlepass feel like a chore.

twisttop138 · April 7

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@Ingel_Riday
It looks a lot like ZOS are trying to find a new income model after the Chapters purchases and ESO+ subscriptions dropped off in the past few years.
It looks like ZOS are looking at other games and trying out what works there e.g. last year's Seasons, this years Battle Passes.
I reckon ESO might go F2P next year.

They borrowed heavily from the fallout 76 model. If they went full f2p I wouldn't be surprised. It's basically f2p now. You can get the game for a couple dollars and I picked up all expansions up to solstice for a second account for like 20 dollars.

I would argue they're not looking for an income model, in fact this is the new revenue driver. People can say all they want that they're the exception. Rewards don't work on them, they don't care how their characters look or housing but the fact of the matter is, battle passes are a thing because they work. It's in ESO because it's proven to work. I would say it'll work here with some tweaks. Rewards need to improve for sure. The UI is bad. Everyone should get the same amount of points for challenges but with the chance for an epic reroll that gives you a higher point challenge that's harder to get. This is early days though. We'll see if Zos can dial it in.

AvalonRanger · April 7

Someone said at the zone chat.

"No pain, No gain".

SirBanana1992 · April 7

I think where the comparaison in tasks between ESO and Marvel Rivals falls off from my PoV playing both is the scope of both games. Marvel Rivals is strictly a team vs team game. It's the equivalent of if ESO was nothing but its battlegrounds mode and nothing else. But ESO has a much larger scope. No matter what task you set the player to complete you will practically always find a crowd of players for whom that task is not just "something that gets done while playing anyways" unless you start getting into very boring territory like "travel X distance" or "use a wayshrine".

Even something like "deal X damage" does not cover crafters, fashionados or housers for example.

twisttop138 · April 7

SirBanana1992 wrote: »

I think where the comparaison in tasks between ESO and Marvel Rivals falls off from my PoV playing both is the scope of both games. Marvel Rivals is strictly a team vs team game. It's the equivalent of if ESO was nothing but its battlegrounds mode and nothing else. But ESO has a much larger scope. No matter what task you set the player to complete you will practically always find a crowd of players for whom that task is not just "something that gets done while playing anyways" unless you start getting into very boring territory like "travel X distance" or "use a wayshrine".

Even something like "deal X damage" does not cover crafters, fashionados or housers for example.

I think the spread of tasks is decent. My wife is a non group casual player while I'm a hard mode end game player, though many of our interests cross. She was able to reroll do 2 trials into do 5 wrothgar world bosses. I had the same and was able to help. Though to be fair wrothgar is so crowded she wouldn't have needed any. So the spread is good. The rerolls are good. Zos just has to dial in some stuff. The UI, rewards, stuff like that. I'm sure it'll get better with a couple seasons under their belt.

Is it good for the game? That's a loaded question. No game moves to a battle pass system because it's doing really good. Quite the opposite with exceptions. Battle passes often are followed by a downturn of content. I would say that's a wait and see. Something I am seeing though, is zones full of people. I was off in some corner of the Cold harbor public dungeon yesterday and even that had more people then it's seen since 2014 likely. Those poor deadra probably got home after work and was like, not now janet. It's been a hell of a day.
So I think that's a positive. That will also slow down with time as people settle into the rhythm. We'll likely see upswings in population as a new season starts and then dropping off again as people finish their tomes.

Destai · April 7

Overall, I'm ok with the battle pass system. While there are problems, it feels like the right move for the game at this time.

From a business perspective, I'm under the impression that content wasn't selling much anymore. It seems like the bulk of their revenue is from MTX, specifically housing and crown crates, so it makes sense to lean into that. I'd rather have this model than lose the game. It also solves a problem - we'll get there eventually - where players are divided by content ownership.

From a gameplay perspective, sure, you could look at this as a glorified task list. But, people are out in the world more now. It's reinvigorated older zones that barely saw any traffic. That's great.

They just need to refine the rewards, improve the UI a little, and I think it'll mature just fine.

AScarlato · April 7

League of Legends passes are the same way. Just play and you will finish them. Doing like you said about Marvel Rivals, just doing what you do to have fun anyway.

Tamriel Tomes are disruptive. I have to drop what I find fun and go chase after pointless tasks with no lore or immersion reasons. I really dislike this aspect.

I wish they generalized more tasks.

Gathering should group them into "gather any node."
Instead of Specific dungeon bosses, "Any Dungeon Boss".

They could cover a lot of playstyles at least for different player interests, without micromanaging my time.

PoveusRonin · April 7

I expected something a little different than what we ended up with. While it is not too bad, I do agree they need to make the objectives less specific. A lot of players run in the day the task is unlocked and do complete it all instead of making it last a week. While this is fine, when you have it too specific, you just end up with most the playerbase all piled on 1 or 2 bosses, areas, etc and the game feels not as fun as it could be.

I think the kill 1000 of the enemies in the 3 areas was meant to highlight those being added to base game recently, but all it did was cause complaints about being stuck in those 3 areas. That and if someone was new to the area, they didn't see anything but a corpse littered zone as groups of people run past killing everything that moved.

heaven13 · April 7

twisttop138 wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@Ingel_Riday
It looks a lot like ZOS are trying to find a new income model after the Chapters purchases and ESO+ subscriptions dropped off in the past few years.
It looks like ZOS are looking at other games and trying out what works there e.g. last year's Seasons, this years Battle Passes.
I reckon ESO might go F2P next year.

Everyone should get the same amount of points for challenges but with the chance for an epic reroll that gives you a higher point challenge that's harder to get. This is early days though. We'll see if Zos can dial it in.

This sounds awful, tbh. Have to remember to reroll to maybe get the chance at an epic tier? So the people who forget/don't know that's an option (and there will always be people who don't know) or those who know and get unlucky just are SOL on an epic reward of points? No thanks.A battlepass should be less RNG-dependent, not more.

heaven13 · April 7

I want to go a step further with the standardization. (Numbers are hypothetical, for illustration purposes only).

Let's say you need 25,000 tome points to unlock all the pages and rewards. There are 13 weeks in a season (52/4). But we also don't want to spread the points too exactly per week, since we want to allow people time for vacations/away, etc. So, let's say we'll give 2500 points per week, for a total of 32,500 max, which is more than enough.

Now, determine how to split up 2500 points. 5 tasks, for 500 points each. Maybe some of these are do once for the full 500 (do an arena, or a trial). Some of these are do 10x for 50 points each (loot a treasure chest). And some are inbetween, like loot 15 resources 5x for 100 points each. But overall, each task ends up being worth the same net number of points. And all of them are more general (loot A resource, kill A world boss, complete A trial, earn X amount of AP which then allows people to do Cyro, or IC, or BGs).

Obviously this doesn't take into account the seasonal challenges so it could be adjusted accordingly (but those all appear to be the same very everyone, so there's not the variation that occurs with the weeklies).

Between generalizing tasks so people are more likely to maybe get at least some done during normal gameplay (and if it's not their normal gameplay, the "chore" is less specific and they have some leeway on how to accomplish said thing) and by standardizing the points so people aren't creating elaborate algorithms on whether it's better to reroll what they have to maybe get something worth more points and what the likelihood of that is based on the types of rolls that exist and how many rerolls they have available, the system will, overall, be much more pleasant to interact with (as a system; the UI is a different story).

SilverBride · April 7

I'm convinced these are not a good fit for ESO. ESO was about the story, not doing tasks for cosmetics. The day Tomes became active is the day ESO was no longer recognizable as the same game to me.

AScarlato · April 7

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm convinced these are not a good fit for ESO. ESO was about the story, not doing tasks for cosmetics. The day Tomes became active is the day ESO was no longer recognizable as the same game to me.

I'm a heavy story/lore person, but I don't think ESO was ever ONLY about the story.

There are a lot of players who play this more as a MMO game than an RPG. People that log in only for PVP, Dungeons, or Trials. Or other challenges. So I think a Battlepass could work - but I think some improvements to reward us but still let us "play our way" with more generalized tasks would go a long way.

I'm not sure if doing a quest is a Tome task, but that could cover story players.

Casul · April 7

IMO I don’t mind the current system but if they wanted a streamlined approach they could just have the weekly goals be XP gain related. Like once you have collected 200,000 XP you get the first objective, and so on 5 times. That would allow PvP and PvE players to get the tome points without running specific content. Otherwise they could also make it so instead for PvP players it could be a AP requirement.

Just thinking about how GW2 does there in game battle passes, it’s always related to the content you do for the most part.

DenverRalphy · April 7

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm convinced these are not a good fit for ESO. ESO was about the story, not doing tasks for cosmetics. The day Tomes became active is the day ESO was no longer recognizable as the same game to me.

The tomes system has nothing to do with the content. If you're only or primarily in it for the story, there story is still there. This new 1000 kills in Wrothgar? While so many are complaining about grinding it out, I instead chose to take an alt into Wrothgar and re-do the questline since I haven't done it in a while. I'm enjoying the story, it doesn't feel like a grind, and I'm rapidly carving through the 1000 kills organically. Other weekly passes are getting completed along the way as well. I'm not playing the battlepass, I'm playing the game.

It's what you make of it.

AzuraFan · April 7

DenverRalphy wrote: »

While so many are complaining about grinding it out, I instead chose to take an alt into Wrothgar and re-do the questline since I haven't done it in a while. I'm enjoying the story, it doesn't feel like a grind, and I'm rapidly carving through the 1000 kills organically.

Oh, I like that idea!

I have a challenge to discover lorebooks this week. I haven't hunted for lorebooks with my main for a while (gave up on it when I realized too many are bugged/unobtainable), but for the challenge, I'll collect lorebooks. In the past, finding lorebooks has taken me to areas I haven't been to for a while. I've even discovered a few side quests that way, long after completing a zone.

For the Wrothgar/Hew's Bane/Gold Coast 1000 kills challenge, I need a lead from one of the WBs in Hew's Bane, so I'm taking the opportunity to kill it and its adds when a lot of people are around to help.

For me, the challenges "suggest" what I should focus on that week. I use re-rolls to get challenges that tie in with stuff I'd do anyway.

couriersix · April 7

The only other game I've played with a battlepass-like system is Dead by Daylight, so that's my main frame of reference. DBD's battlepass system genuinely sucks, often with far more tedious and hyper-specific challenges, and you don't even get to keep the battlepass after purchasing it, so if you fail to complete it, then you are SOL.

I think ESO's isn't horrible, but it could be better. I was able to get more than halfway through it relatively quickly. I think one way they could alleviate the need to do challenges is by adding additional sources of tome points, such as gaining experience, or turning in quests. This would help people feel less reliant on challenges, and would reward people for playing the game naturally.

AScarlato · April 7

couriersix wrote: »

The only other game I've played with a battlepass-like system is Dead by Daylight, so that's my main frame of reference. DBD's battlepass system genuinely sucks, often with far more tedious and hyper-specific challenges, and you don't even get to keep the battlepass after purchasing it, so if you fail to complete it, then you are SOL.

I think ESO's isn't horrible, but it could be better. I was able to get more than halfway through it relatively quickly. I think one way they could alleviate the need to do challenges is by adding additional sources of tome points, such as gaining experience, or turning in quests. This would help people feel less reliant on challenges, and would reward people for playing the game naturally.

Did you get through it with ESO+ points, or just from the free pass points itself?

I'm on Page 3, but due to inventory overload I bought a month of ESO+ so that jumped me up a page.