spartaxoxo wrote: »

Have you tried creating your own group finder with groups with specific names like "Parch bosses," or the like?

Yes, I have tried using the group finder, and part of the reason I’ve been reluctant to start groups myself is honestly because I often do not fully understand what I’m supposed to be doing within the Night Market activities. I see many players who clearly already know the mechanics, routes, progression systems, and objectives, while I’m still trying to understand how everything connects together.

That’s really what I meant earlier when I said events like this highlight how differently parts of the ESO playerbase experience the game. I’m mostly an overland-content player, and I do not normally run dungeons, trials, or coordinated group activities regularly. So I do not already have an established network of players who can quickly move through all three zones efficiently.

I do want to be fair and honest though — my experience improved significantly once I finally joined a group that knew what they were doing. A friend on Discord pointed out a group running bosses for keys, and once I joined them, things started making much more sense. I finally understood more of the progression systems, and now I only need whatever “weak enemies from the district” means for Sorrow’s Friend, along with the skirmishes in all three zones, to finish the relic progression. There really does not seem to be much documentation explaining what some of these achievement requirements actually refer to.

The race activities also became much more enjoyable after a friend explained the fire and lightning buffs and how to actually use them properly. Before that, I honestly had no idea what the intended mechanics were. Once I understood it and was running with experienced players, the entire event became more fun and much less frustrating.

So I do want to update my earlier comments a bit: after getting into a competent group with a few strong leaders organizing things, I enjoyed the Night Market much more. Everyone generally knew what they were doing, people were helping each other, and the cooperative aspect actually became very fun. In some ways it reminded me of older MMOs where grouping together socially was part of the experience.

That is also why I still think there is an important discussion about accessibility for different types of players. Players who already have access to organized dungeon/trial communities are naturally going to experience the event very differently than players in smaller casual guilds or players who mostly play solo.

I actually would like to see more cooperative content like this in ESO. I was even disappointed when Craglorn was eventually scaled down from its original group-oriented design because I enjoyed the social aspect of grouping there. But at the same time, older content like Craglorn still generally felt more approachable for smaller groups.

So for future content, maybe there are ways to preserve these large cooperative experiences while also offering scaling or alternative progression paths for smaller groups. For example, if 12 players are available, great — let the content remain large-scale. But if only 4 players are available, perhaps there could be scaled mechanics or alternate objectives so players with different social situations can still participate meaningfully.

Syldras wrote: »

I wish I could kill factions (and I'm not talking about PvP) - it would make the Night Market more interesting

Never understand why some people like to ruin the game for others so much.

This is something that's niggled at me for a while. Looking at it from the outside, there is something of a mismatch between what the current iteration of the Night Market is intended to be and how the content inside the zone itself actually behaves.

So:
Get A >> Do B >> Get C >> Do D

If this sounds familiar to some, this is technically what might be described as standard 'quest progression'. We've been doing this for years. In order to progress your individual quest you have to do a to go to b etc. We're used to it. But in this case it's an issue because the progression is tied to individuals (not groups). While that's not necessarily a problem for overland groups, it does become a problem for dungeons/trial groups.

In this case, creating a group to do that particular content becomes an administrative task. You're either spending hours waiting around to get enough people with the right combination of 'progress' to get into the dungeons/trials, or if you're leading a guild group, ensuring that the members that want to take part have the correct progress. If you get someone in the group who doesn't have the progress, they have to drop out and you have to find someone else. It's messy at best.

Filling up a group with people who can all 'do the thing' should not have a high administrative overhead - this is a game, not a school outing. The challenge here is that you have what is essentially an individual type progress loop inside content that is geared specifically towards grouping. Those two things do not gel and it is turning grouping into a chore - which I can't imagine was the intention. Yes,. you can specify a group for dungeons/trials but you will end up with members who either don't have the keys, or didn't realise that they are one time use.

I could be wrong, but it feels in all honesty, a little bit like the overland progression was initially designed and setup for solo play (perhaps with soft-grouping for bosses), and the final dungeons/trials needing full grouping, but then the decision was made to ramp up the challenge level of overland overall to the extent that you really need a group. Some options to resolve this mismatch could be the following.

Make it so that the only person who has to have the keys is the group leader
Remove the need for the keys to be farmed repeatedly (and make the keys account wide so that people with multiple builds can switch if needed)
If you must wall off the dungeons/trial, then make is so that what unlocks them can be achieved by a group working together (not individuals within that group) and isn't so arduous and time consuming that you end up with members dropping out or having to leave (people have work, families, get burned out by the dying/respawning loop etc.)

Calamitous Dunegorger is perhaps the most fun fight in the Night Market. Devs really cooked with that one. Unfortunately it does tend to bug out though where none of the Gastric Stalks/organs will spawn rendering the boss unkillable. Still one of the most creative fights I've seen in a while.