Sluggy wrote: »

I've been soloing it just 'fine' for the most part. I'm not a great player by any means and I don't have some super secrete build. It's slow going for sure but I have absolutely zero issues getting through by just tanking my way through it.

As I've written in this very thread: Me too. I have fun in the Market. I do quests solo. I was even lucky to see some group yesterday that I could run around with. I've got 750 favor within an hour (aiming for 5000), I got 7 of 10 parts for the first relic. It's working well for me.

But that doesn't change that there seem to be many people who can't do this - otherwise the forums wouldn't look like they've been looking for the past 2 days.

The problem we see with "solo" content like this or arenas is that the typical PVE crowd following PVE guides always has trouble. Time and time again funny enough, the pvp players do very well in these forms of content. It kinda comes down to the fact that pvpers tend to learn all 3 roles of how to do damage, tank and heal themselves to survive. Yet most newer PvE players get stuck learning one concept.

But what level do you design the content for? In the past zos made basically all overland content a starter zone quality, delves and public dungeons would be midlevel to cp, dungeons would be up to midCP, trials up to maxcp. There have always been complaints and demand for more and more content from the main playerbase.

• lvl3 new account friendly? Even mid levels would get bored.
• for lvl30s? even cp160 players would get bored.
• cp160 content? any midcp players would get bored.

Its a tough choice, but you'd probably want to aim that maxcp can solo inefficiently, midcp can 4 man, lower cp and below zerg. To get a decent spread on your playerbase for a special event assuming newer lower level players would be questing or leveling.

This decision issue and content demand is why they are looking into difficulty options now.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

SirGabenOfSteamia wrote: »

There is nothing else comparable in terms of difficulty to the night market except maybe actual vet trials.

Vet Trials are much much harder than Night Market... Night Market is on par with Normal Trials.

I would say Normal DLC Trials but your point stands.

Is it my kind of “fun”? 100% it is!
Is it tough? Yepp'er and all the better for it.
Is it a worthless slog? Could be for some and not for others.
Did ZOS represent it poorly & players jump to conclusions about how easy it would be? 6 of one & half a dozen of the other.

It's an MMO event, so enjoy it/complain about it while you can.

Syldras wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

As an aside, I would hope Zos would be more clear in the future. The tag line you might want to bring a group, that says to me they're saying it in a cheeky way. Just be super clear. You will need a good build and effort to solo this. It is very hard. We recommend grouping. But in an attempt to probably not rile feathers they didn't. They kind of tiptoed.

Indeed communication seems to be a problem. I'm honestly a bit concerned it wasn't better this time, after the Writhing Wall event last year had already caused so much discontent in the playerbase, when it was hyped as some epic battle, but then it was several weeks of boring, repetative fetch quests (and crafting quests that used up expensive materials for a tiny, useless reward) for some weird counter and a completely meaningless competition (What's it with all these random faction competitions?) - and the actual battle was just the Fortress, which only opened for one single week after weeks of mindless grind. Let alone the Fortress was then so bugged that many people couldn't complete it. It was a disaster, so I thought they might want to avoid something like that happening again.

And I already have the feeling that the High Seas event might be the next disappointment for many, as people seem to be expecting actual naval battles where you control ships, which I somehow don't believe is really possible with how ESO is coded. If ZOS doesn't react on these speculations, the forum will probably filled with complaints again when the event launches.

100% agree. For the new vaunted communication they're supposed to be showing, it's been really lacking. Someone please tell me if I'm mistaken but, the communication was really really good. Until they hold sold us tomes. After the release of tomes, it kinda went back to where it was before with a few exceptions. To be expected really. They probably told them to get out there and sell sell sell. Maybe someone can tell me if pts communication is on the level it was during that time when they were trying to sell the new Zos.

I will always believe that clear communication is the best course. A lot of this could've been avoided if they'd said this zone requires a really good build and game knowledge to solo and we really expect that you should get a group.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I have done the entirety of my Night Market runs so far with a PUG group via the group finder.

That up to YESTERDAY. Not today.

PC EU, prime time tonight. There is NOBODY in NM and is Friday night. Last two days there were people regardless the instance. The place was packed.

Tonight 7 groups listed, 4 of them required all the relics completed or getting the boot, because they are doing the dungeons.
Of the rest 3 groups, all 3 are just 1 DD.

All guilds stopped doing NM also. People got the Mythic and they do not care for the grind any more.

If there were people for NM there would be more than 7 listings in the Group Finder too.

Did some of my quests totally solo with an immortal build DK. Only way to move around without dying with simple look by the trash mobs.

IDK who at ZOS thought that people will stick around in this ridiculous grindfest, after they do the absolute minimum to get the mythic and monster set the first couple of days.

I bet by next week there won't be anyone in Night Market. So those who want to continue try for the tome's won't be able to do so. Except if spending 3 hours per day to just gather few favour soloing with a tank that cannot kill anything, supposed to be "entertainment".

ZOS FAILED with this event.

And for the first time in 12.5 years been here (since beta), NEVER had such issue with anything added in the game. But NM is not well thought event, barring the majority and those who want to do it, cannot continue on Day 3, because there aren't people to group with.

While the rest of the server is packed.

Find a group huh?

Syldras wrote: »

Even if it might be hard to understand for some people, I am searching for an explanation why there's so many angry posts right now, why people are disappointed - and how that could be avoided in the future, because it's surely not good for this game, and I enjoy this game and want it to flourish. Don't you want that too?

I feel it’s mainly because of the format change, and a lot of people are lashing out at it not going how they imagined it would. But there are a lot of issues, and most of them are not something ZOS can fix because it has to do with the mindset of the players.

With the old Chapter model, we had a general system: Q1 was Dungeons; Q2 was a big zone with delves and WBs, a story, a trial, and dailies; Q3 was more Dungeons (later nothing but QoL); and then Q4 was a small zone (later a grab bag with Archive or PvP).
But importantly, all of that came at once. We got a major announcement in January about what was releasing in June since the Chapter was the big thing. Then it dropped and people could focus on what they liked… and ignore what they didn’t. Most story people couldn’t care less about the Trial, so they never thought about it.

That changed this year.
We got an announcement in January, but it really only followed Season Zero stuff. That means people are seeing the Night Market as “the big thing for the whole year” instead of just a thing in this season. They’re used to hearing hype for the big thing, and now there is no big thing - there are three small things.
Not to mention, the big thing was always a big zone. People heard “event zone” and missed the word ‘event.’

Essentially, people are seeing the Night Market as a replacement for the Chapter zone. They paid real money for the Season pass (which they didn’t need to, but they’re used to buying the Chapter in January) and only thought they were making Chapter stuff cheaper instead of fundamentally changing it. Then the “zone” comes out and it has basically no story and is designed for groups. That feels like a betrayal.
What they don’t understand is that the story stuff is coming, and it’s coming in the June patch like normal. But there’s no zone attached. The Night Market is a replacement for the Dungeons we normally get, but these people never gave a second thought to Dungeons since they never did them, so they don’t know (or care) that they didn’t release this year. And then this does, and it’s not called “Dungeons,” so they don’t think of this along the lines of other group content.

Another issue is the fact that the devs were dancing around the grouping. They made it quite clear that it was designed for groups but solo players could zerg surf or solo if they were strong enough. But for players who mostly solo zone quests, there is no indication of what ‘strong enough’ means. The devs should have said something like “people with Flawless Conqueror may not struggle,” to put things in a bit of perspective.
If a player has soloed the entire questline of every zone for the past 11 years, they may consider themselves expert soloists since they don’t need others. They don’t understand that zone quests are the lowest common denominator of difficulty, and can be done in pretty well any gear and skillset. But they think they’re experts due to doing it so long. As such, once they hear that “experts could solo this,” they think that includes them, and then they get in and get deleted instantly. The game does a bad job of teaching players anything combat- or gear-related, and them getting oneshot then makes them think it has to be an issue with the game since they can do everything overland just fine… not considering that overland is not teaching anything about what’s important.

Finally, the dripfeed release model is bad. I get the idea is to try to keep interest generally high (instead of like New World’s version of “a single content drop and an influx of players, and then everyone leaves when they’re done,” which ESO also kind of had). However, this means that every content drop doesn’t have something for everyone - the drops are smaller and then targeted to specific bases. If you’re not part of that playerbase, then you just see ZOS not doing anything for you.
We haven’t gotten content since the other half of Solstice opened. And then March’s patch gave us larger DK visuals, but no content. This is the first big new thing to do… and it’s for groups. Soloists are sitting there wondering where their stuff is (and not realizing that U50 is all solo stuff and nothing for anyone else). As such, it feels to some like the solos have been abandoned, because they are not seeing what’s coming up.

So yeah, it’s a lot. But it’s mostly a reduction in content from what we used to get leading to no zone this year, and now they started the year with the typical Dungeon content equivalent being hyped and the stuff from the rest of the year being kept quiet.

It's hard to say for me what the average story-focused soloist might know or think, or not, especially considering that we forum people are only a tiny minority of the playerbase as a whole. Most people never come here, and I guess many don't even read the news articles on the website. So how informed people are on average - I don't know.

My personal experience as a lore-focused player who knows many other lore- and story-content-focused players, is that people are still informed about the different content types in ESO, and about their different difficulties, even if they don't (regularly) play group content themselves. I don't think I ever came across a person who thought they were a very skilled player just because they've done overland questing for a decade. I think people are aware that overland is easy. Then again, of course, I only know forum people, who could generally be better informed.

In any way, we can see there's a lot of disappointment right now, and that the cause is partially wrong expectations (people believing the Night Market was easier to solo) and partially misconceptions (believing there is no story content this year, or that the Night Market replaced the old story zones). I think there would be a solution: Clearer communication.

Not "There's some challenging content where a solo player might want to seek help" (which sounded like at least some content, except for harder enemies or bosses, was soloable for everyone without grouping - and while I get that done, factually many more casual players can't even get past the trash mobs, at least I've read that so often in the past few days) - but clearly: Group content, vet content. So people clearly know if the content is for them or not, and don't only notice after they've gone through that faction choice process and explored the plaza and then suddenly, after half an hour or longer, they notice they can't progress alone at all, and they do absolutely need to group, which is not the playstyle they enjoy. That's unnecessary frustration.

It doesn't matter if one feels the same way, or has a different view; and I know some people said they can't understand the reaction at all, but that doesn't matter - it's the way it is: There are a lot of frustrated people right now. And that's a problem for a game that needs constant participation and revenue.

Take some time to learn before throwing up your hands. I learned today that the spider oddity gives a high DPS flame aura that let me destroy mobs solo.

Iexo_Peoa wrote: »

A lot of people have been talking about soft grouping here... Except that there's nobody to group with. I don't know if there are too many instances, or if I've been getting on at bad times, but I can sit by the door in a district for an hour and never see another player come through, the whole place is like a ghost town. Where and how are these soft groups supposed to form?

Don't sit at the entrance waiting for groups to stumble onto you. Open the group finder, select a Night Market group that's working an objective conducive to your goal, and join. After you join, travel to the group's instance.

If you sit there at the entrance, you'll wait ages. If you use group finder, you'll find a group within seconds.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Iexo_Peoa wrote: »

A lot of people have been talking about soft grouping here... Except that there's nobody to group with. I don't know if there are too many instances, or if I've been getting on at bad times, but I can sit by the door in a district for an hour and never see another player come through, the whole place is like a ghost town. Where and how are these soft groups supposed to form?

Don't sit at the entrance waiting for groups to stumble onto you. Open the group finder, select a Night Market group that's working an objective conducive to your goal, and join. After you join, travel to the group's instance.

If you sit there at the entrance, you'll wait ages. If you use group finder, you'll find a group within seconds.

And to further this—don't hesitate to start your own group too! Honestly all of the groups I've been in and made have been delightful. I've only really had one negative experience with a person getting uppity cause we died to the trash (to blood port) and they rage quit thinking we weren't able to kill the boss. We killed it just fine without a single death.

Done all with pick up groups.
Dunjeons aren't Coral Aerie HM : this is only simple bosses with simple mechanics, accessible to ANYONE who has learned one basic thing: when there is an AOE around your character, you must not stay inside.

And the trial is not vDSR HM either...Far, very very far from that. When i read things like : " There is nothing else comparable in terms of difficulty to the night market except maybe actual vet trials " ---> this is a proof some ppl don't know what is a vet dlc trial.

People are always crying over nothing, and that's why the game has become too easy. If people are still standing in AOEs at 2000+ CP, we can't do anything for them, sorry.

For once, this event is perfectly balanced for everyone.
- Average players can complete it easily because the mechanics are straightforward and don't require massive group coordination.
- Veteran players don't kill the boss with two spammables spells.

Syldras wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

technically speaking vet dungeons are "hard to solo", and for some people even the vet solo arenas are hard to solo
i would slot the night market in with soloing vet dlc dungeons, its absolutely possible to solo (i was doing so for awhile on thursday on a full tank build, obviously i had low dmg so it took forever to kill anything, but i was soloing with a dps companion)
what would you expect from them saying that it would be difficult to solo? im trying to gauge what the expectation was from the announcement of what you thought "hard to solo" meant

The thing that needs to be considered is that the stream and the news articles aim at a wide audience - all ESO players. And this game particularly has a huge amount of people who are only here for the quest experience, especially because it's a TES game which means a lot of people coming from the singleplayer TES games are here, and because quest content was the main addition every year with those chapters (and story dlcs when they still existed). I doubt very much that most of these people are able to solo vet dlc dungeons. Actually I don't even need to guess, I've seen dozens of posts here in the past 3 days where people stated they can't even get past the first trash mob and get one-shotted if they just try to enter the combat zone. And these people get frustrated when they see they can't even move around for three seconds before getting killed.

Had ZOS clearly, without any way to misinterpret it, stated it was absolutely group content, or for which skill level exactly the Market is designed, then more people would have understood if this content release is for them or not. I bet in that case they would have just ignored the Market - there was never any forum drama when a dungeon dlc or trial released, because people who don't like group content or who can't solo hard content knew what's it about and therefore just ignored them - , but since communication was too vague, we have lots of negativity here now. I don't think that's good for the game.

I personally have been solo questing at the Market without problems during the past few days, always joining in when there was a boss fight somewhere. But I still think the announcement has created absolutely false expectations in many people, and that's a problem. A communication problem more precisely, and sadly not the first one, if I think about the Writhing Wall event last year.

my interpretation of their statements was that difficult to solo and recommended grouping or sticking together was telling us that the difficulty to be expected was like soloing a dlc vet dungeon

it sounds like some people were interpreting that "hard to solo" was public dungeon level difficulty, which for anyone who has run any vet content at all, would be a pure cakewalk

im not sure if the issue is poor reading comprehension if zos has to spell everything out in extremely explicit terminology, or if their terminology was too vague, or a little bit of both

when i read all the posts it usually feels like half the time people think zos is catering specifically to them 100% of the time

Illmatic wrote: »

And the trial is not vDSR HM either...Far, very very far from that. When i read things like : " There is nothing else comparable in terms of difficulty to the night market except maybe actual vet trials " ---> this is a proof some ppl don't know what is a vet dlc trial.

My statement was coming from someone who has cleared most hm DLC trials and a GH and DB prog.

Most trials aren't actually difficult, they just require a lot of understanding of mechanics and coordination.

When I said it's only comparable to vet trials, I meant by the sheer damage output of adds and bosses and their ridiculous health pools, only stretched further by the unnecessary amount of invulnerability phases and infinite adds that spawn during every fight.

Every single overworld boss in the night market is just ripped from other DLCs or trials, but with more watered down mechanics and dealing more damage and with more health.

When people don't know what they're doing, like with the brood skirmish event sometimes, I've seen it stretch half an hour while people continuously throw themselves off the roof into the arena to die instantly because there was no group cohesion or tank.

All I was saying was how insanely overtuned and solo-unfriendly the night market is, and how I think people are in their right to complain about it and that their concerns should be addressed instead of being told to quit trying.