Tamriel Tomes Feel like a Tomb

Apollosipod · May 12

I was fine with the idea of Tomes taking over for daily and weekly challenges, but man has this been a disappointment. With the entire team behind this and I sweat I've done the same challenges 50 times now. The pool of potential weekly challenges is about an inch deep, it seems. If Tamriel Tomes is going to succeed for the long term, ZOS has got to come up with a wider array of potential challenges. It has turned what was a fun thing to work on each week into a mind numbing slog I can't even be bothered to do.

Does anyone else feel like this is a step in the wrong direction?

Danikat · May 12

I agree they need more variety.

I assume some are going to change with each season. The current ones seem to be pushing Wrothgar a lot - that's the only public dungeon I've seen come up (and on two seperate weeks I've rerolled enough to get multiples of it) and there's also one which specifies Wrothgar world bosses. I assume that's because it recently became part of the base game instead of paid DLC and ZOS are pushing newer players to try it out, so next season those challenges will be replaced with ones pushing whatever they want to advertise next.

I also saw one today which was new to me, kill 25 storm atronachs or 25 of something else (can't remember what). It wasn't interesting enough for me to keep it, but I hadn't seen it before so I think it might be a new addition to the pool.

But considering all the trial and error and corrections they did with endeavours you'd think they would have copied the whole list over. I understand needing to adjust the numbers when they're expecting us to do multiple challenges in a week, and some of them can be completed several times, but they could at least have kept the full range of activities.

SkaiFaith · May 12

I can understand your point but I don't agree: I tend to think more different tasks will likely mean me spending more rerolls.

On PTS there are new Tome Challenges for next update. They are tied to new features, such as new Thieves quests and similar stuff.

If they continuously add to the pool of tasks, I expect the pool to forever increase in tasks I may want to skip. I don't need a bazillion tasks if they are not what I typically do. I prefer them to be something I already do than something that force me to go out of my path.

But I totally understand this could be a "me problem" and everyone has different opinions...

(Edited typo)

licenturion · May 12

They seem to improve.

I got 'do 3 dungeons' this week instead of 'Do Elden Root II for 3 times'. Let's hope they do this for the others as well

The more generic, the better so it fits in people organic gameplay instead of standing for 25 minutes at a world boss spot with a 5 minute timer on my phone to get 1 attack in before the boss dies after 1.5 seconds.

PeacefulAnarchy · May 12

SkaiFaith wrote: »

I can understand your point but I don't agree: I tend to think more different tasks will likely mean me spending more rerolls.

On PTS there are new Tome Challenges for next update. They are tied to new features, such as new Thieves quests and such.

If they continuously add to the poll of tasks, I expect the poll to forever increase in tasks I may want to skip. I don't need a bazillion tasks if they are not what I typically do. I prefer them to be something I already do than something that force me to go out of my path.

But I totally understand this could be a "me problem" and everyone has different opinions...

I agree, variety is good if there's real choice. If it's just more things in a random pool then it just makes things more tedious and unpredictable. If everything else is the same (12 challenge limit, 5 rerolls a week, can't abandon challenges if at cap, challenges of variable time commitment and point value) then I'd like the pool to be small enough so I can at least find the challenges I want and maybe get repeats to make things more palatable.

If they were to fundamentally change the structure, like giving us an actual free choice of challenges, then more challenges would be nice, but otherwise no.

Danikat · May 12

SkaiFaith wrote: »

I can understand your point but I don't agree: I tend to think more different tasks will likely mean me spending more rerolls.

On PTS there are new Tome Challenges for next update. They are tied to new features, such as new Thieves quests and such.

If they continuously add to the poll of tasks, I expect the poll to forever increase in tasks I may want to skip. I don't need a bazillion tasks if they are not what I typically do. I prefer them to be something I already do than something that force me to go out of my path.

But I totally understand this could be a "me problem" and everyone has different opinions...

One problem with this is the lists aren't personalised and things you already do may not be things I already do, but if they try to include things everyone already does without making the list too long we're very likely to end up with a situation where a lot of people are stuck with the same few tasks every single week, which would get extremely boring.

Simple example: I'm sure some people think 'complete a trial' is ideal because they always do at least 1 trial every week with their regular group, while some other people have never done a trial at all and have no intention of ever attempting one.

Personally I think one thing that would help is having the option to delete a challenge (even after it's been partially completed) if you're sure you're never going to do it. Not reroll it to something else, I understand why that's limited, I mean just delete it out the list with no replacement, but freeing up space for something else to be added the next week, so no one is stuck with a challenge they're never going to complete because they're not allowed or can't afford to reroll it.

Apollosipod · May 12

Danikat wrote: »

I agree they need more variety.

I assume some are going to change with each season. The current ones seem to be pushing Wrothgar a lot - that's the only public dungeon I've seen come up (and on two seperate weeks I've rerolled enough to get multiples of it) and there's also one which specifies Wrothgar world bosses. I assume that's because it recently became part of the base game instead of paid DLC and ZOS are pushing newer players to try it out, so next season those challenges will be replaced with ones pushing whatever they want to advertise next.

I also saw one today which was new to me, kill 25 storm atronachs or 25 of something else (can't remember what). It wasn't interesting enough for me to keep it, but I hadn't seen it before so I think it might be a new addition to the pool.

But considering all the trial and error and corrections they did with endeavours you'd think they would have copied the whole list over. I understand needing to adjust the numbers when they're expecting us to do multiple challenges in a week, and some of them can be completed several times, but they could at least have kept the full range of activities.

25 fire atronachs hah. Unfortunately I've seen that one too 😭

Apollosipod · May 13

licenturion wrote: »

They seem to improve.

I got 'do 3 dungeons' this week instead of 'Do Elden Root II for 3 times'. Let's hope they do this for the others as well

The more generic, the better so it fits in people organic gameplay instead of standing for 25 minutes at a world boss spot with a 5 minute timer on my phone to get 1 attack in before the boss dies after 1.5 seconds.

I agree with that. I just can't stomach the "go to Sanctum Ophidia" or worse, run out of rerolls and end up having to go do 6 runs of a Wrothgar public dungeon. I certainly don't need the gear. I'm not getting skill points. I'm just being tasked to sit in this room and wait between trash murders. It's not creative and engaging. It's tedious.

AzuraFan · May 13

Definitely need more variety. I've received some of the same ones over and over again, and there are a few I've never seen. How many times do I have to collect 15 wood logs or do the same three dungeons?

Also, and this is too late for feedback, but the first tome should have been released with infinite rerolls, given that the gold option wasn't available. I'm stuck with one I'll never do this week because I ran out of rerolls. Two of my original 5 were trial ones, and one was PvP, so three bad ones. I had to reroll all, and kept getting trial ones/duplicates. When I ran out of rerolls, 4/5 challenges were okay but I'm stuck with a trial one I'll never do. So now I have less stuff to do this week, plus I'll have a useless challenge carrying over week to week until the season ends.

Danikat wrote: »

Personally I think one thing that would help is having the option to delete a challenge (even after it's been partially completed) if you're sure you're never going to do it. Not reroll it to something else, I understand why that's limited, I mean just delete it out the list with no replacement, but freeing up space for something else to be added the next week, so no one is stuck with a challenge they're never going to complete because they're not allowed or can't afford to reroll it.

Yes, exactly.

I really wish they'd just let us select from a list every week. That way we could do stuff we enjoy, or stuff that we think will complete naturally as we play, rather than feeling like we have a list of chores to do before we can get to the activities we really want to be doing. Forget about all this reroll nonsense, duplicates, etc. Just let us choose our challenges every week, or let us favourite challenges so they have a much greater chance of showing up.

I don't know why everything has to be overcomplicated in this game, and why everything's designed to try to get us to do stuff we don't enjoy. Yes, there are rerolls, but limited rerolls and increasing gold cost when it's available are unnecessary. If we can't choose what to do, at least don't penalize us for trying to get five challenges we can live with. Who thought that was a good idea, penalizing players for trying to find challenges they'll enjoy? Let us do what we enjoy and we'll spend more time in game, not less.

Alp · May 13

It's complicated, I think.
Ideally, you would just not do all the challenges given to you. Just doing the ones you want to do each week. But knowing the community, if we are given an option to earn something, we will do it despite the struggle.
So we got rerolls, cool. But we reroll all the ones we can't do or aren't bothered to do till we can do all of them.
We should add more, yes, but any challenge that requires several people to do has to make sure there are people doing those activities, like world bosses (I know a lot of people can solo a lot of them), for example, so a player doesn't end up alone with a challenge made for groups.

And the more variety in challenges we get, the less the chance of multiple people having the same challenge being online at the same time becomes.
The solution is what they are doing, though, as far as I can hear from the PTS comment above, curating the challenges given out to people each week. So we feel like we are getting a variety of challenges, while never ending up asking 1 guy who plays online during low-population times, having a challenge to do a really unpopular dungeon that most people do not own or want to do. The people who don't own it should, of course, also not be given that challenge. But then, are we punishing people who own unpopular content by diluting their favourable challenges with more variety?

The system is copied from Fallout 76, where it works, because most challenges are meant for solo play and usually only one challenge per day/week will be aimed at group content, excluding the weekly trial challenge, which has its own reward exclusive to it.

Where ESO differs from 76's system is that we only get weekly and seasonal challenges, and no daily challenges. And we get rerolls handed out as a pool each week instead of having 2 free ones each day. I am not sure which is better, but 76 has had its system for a while.

In the end, I think the solution is curration, and maybe giving people more challenges, but with a cap on how many of them you can do each week. Like, give people 10 challenges with equal rewards and cap the rewards at 5 challenges. That would let people do what challenges they want. If you choose the same each week, that's on you. Maybe drop the rerolls if this is the case, and just give everyone the same challenges. Could help with getting people to do certain content as well, even if it's only a fraction of them that choose to do that specific challenge out of the weekly selection.

Silaf · May 13

Personally my main problem with the tome is when it overlaps with golden pursuits, events or in future the pvp veterancy mode.

Those are all fetch quests reskinned and i'm fine with one but multiple at the same time...

Wnen Night Market was released i luckly did complete all tome challenges the day before and the released golden pursuit was strictly related to the new zone but otherwise it would have been really annoying.
Let's say that for some reason i was unable to complete all tomes weaklies in the release day i would have skipped the first night marked day to complete them... really annoying.

And yes i know, i can keep the tome and have weeks to complete the challenges but in practice playing with things that you know are on a countdown is annoying and you want to get rid of them as fast as possible.

Alp · May 13

Silaf wrote: »

Personally my main problem with the tome is when it overlaps with golden pursuits, events or in future the pvp veterancy mode.

Those are all fetch quests reskinned and i'm fine with one but multiple at the same time...

Wnen Night Market was released i luckly did complete all tome challenges the day before and the released golden pursuit was strictly related to the new zone but otherwise it would have been really annoying.
Let's say that for some reason i was unable to complete all tomes weaklies in the release day i would have skipped the first night marked day to complete them... really annoying.

And yes i know, i can keep the tome and have weeks to complete the challenges but in practice playing with things that you know are on a countdown is annoying and you want to get rid of them as fast as possible.

Yeah agreed that they have seemingly become 2 systems that almost serve the same purpose.

In 76 there is a challenge page with categories like:

Daily
Weekly
Event (Only shows up when there is an active event, similar to golden pursuits, which is not always a good thing because people miss that it's there if not advertised sufficiently).
*Other challenges which are not time-based, like fishing or character achievements*

Each lets you pin challenges to your UI, visible in the pause menu like one system, despite rewards being tied to different things. Makes it a bit nicer when it feels like one coherent UI despite the rewards being different.

Like you can have:

*daily that rewards season points*
*weekly that rewards season points*
*event challenge that rewards a specific event reward*
*catch this fish*

All in the same UI.
Maybe that would help? Just having one challenge page with different subcategories for weekly, monthly, and golden pursuit challenges, so we can see them all at once rather than in 2 different places.

Let us pin achievements in there as well while we are at it. That can't be done without addons atm, and getting back to that one achievement you are doing to check your progress is kinda annoying.

Dojohoda · May 13

I play a mini game by rolling for duplicates.

Rishikesa108 · May 13

Please note that the Season lasts three months, and once you've purchased everything with Tamriel Tomes, you can't hoard them for the next Season. In fact, you can only take 2,000 Tomes; the rest will be lost (converted into a mere handful of gold, a ridiculous amount). So, keep an eye on your Tomes accumulation... if you have nothing left to purchase and you have more than 2,000, then stop doing the weekly challenges!

AScarlato · May 13

Not only are the tasks repetitive, I already finished the tome and nothing really to look forward to in that regards for the next 2 months.

The glut of rewards was nice though.

Taarente · May 13

I effectively finished the Tomes side of the season a couple of weeks ago. With ESO Plus I started with 6000 Tomes from caches, then did all 3 season challenges plus the weeklys and ended up around 11,000 points earned.

At this point I’ve picked up pretty much everything from the track that interests me, and now the weekly quests are just stacking up because there’s no real reason for me to go back into Tomes. The system feels like it runs out of meaningful rewards very quickly if you engage with it heavily.

SundarahFr3akinrican · May 13

I like the system a lot. Daily log ins were just a downer. Event tickets were a bit annoying. I look forward to seeing my challenges every week.

SundarahFr3akinrican · May 13

Taarente wrote: »

I effectively finished the Tomes side of the season a couple of weeks ago. With ESO Plus I started with 6000 Tomes from caches, then did all 3 season challenges plus the weeklys and ended up around 11,000 points earned.

At this point I’ve picked up pretty much everything from the track that interests me, and now the weekly quests are just stacking up because there’s no real reason for me to go back into Tomes. The system feels like it runs out of meaningful rewards very quickly if you engage with it heavily.

yeah well if you pay to unlock it...like yeah...itlll be unlocked and there wont be anything to do. paying months of subs doesnt seem like "engaging" with it to me.

AScarlato · May 13

SundarahFr3akinrican wrote: »

Taarente wrote: »

I effectively finished the Tomes side of the season a couple of weeks ago. With ESO Plus I started with 6000 Tomes from caches, then did all 3 season challenges plus the weeklys and ended up around 11,000 points earned.

At this point I’ve picked up pretty much everything from the track that interests me, and now the weekly quests are just stacking up because there’s no real reason for me to go back into Tomes. The system feels like it runs out of meaningful rewards very quickly if you engage with it heavily.

yeah well if you pay to unlock it...like yeah...itlll be unlocked and there wont be anything to do. paying months of subs doesnt seem like "engaging" with it to me.

Even if they didn't start with 6K they'd probably be done by now with the season challenges. I didn't start with 6K and am done over a week ago also.

Firstmep · May 13

They also need more reward pages. It's insane that you can max out every page in like less than a third way through the season.

kind_hero · May 13

My problem with "tomes" is that so many people do the same thing, and you get players stacked up at world bosses or places where you complete the tasks. For example the Kvatch arena is packed with people, you don't even get to see Panthius coming out in the arena because he is killed on the spot.

In my opinion, I would make most of the challenges different, and transform them into quests that can be shared (not all).

However, there is still plenty of time, and without trying much I unlocked page 4 or 5, where I got some furnishing boxes I wanted. I think the system is much better than the previous one with endeavors.

Thoriorz · May 13

My opinion is that it’s fine the way it is. Personally, I’ll do a reroll every now and then (for a PvP or trial quest, for example), but otherwise, my main goal is to earn as many Tome Points as possible in the shortest amount of time, given the activities I do in ESO.

Luneca · May 13

I simply chose not to do them. Even "Capture 3 Keeps" is kind of ridiculous because it can be impossible for you to complete if the faction is on the defense, has too many keeps by the time you login, or the server is dead.

And let's be honest, what happens more often than taking a keep? Defending one. In PvP most of my time is spent defending (and firing siege because I can't be bothered to waste time doing something as unfun as PvE, making a build, and getting nerfed repeatedly).

Then the other challenges. I haven't and will not ever collect 25 mats x 6 times. Ever.

I hate mat collection so much that I would turn the game off before I ever do it. Especially with my clogged inventory. No thanks.

That leaves killing Bogdan for the 45th time, doing Dolemns I don't need to do, and other activities that are just as bad.

My brother saw the tome stuff and was initially excited, kind of like Night Market. Afterwards, he apparently despises it so much that he'd rather drive with me IRL instead. And I am a terrible driver.

AlienSlof · May 13

Luneca wrote: »

My brother saw the tome stuff and was initially excited, kind of like Night Market. Afterwards, he apparently despises it so much that he'd rather drive with me IRL instead. And I am a terrible driver.

This made me giggle as my mother is the same about my driving!

Thank you for my morning laugh!

I like the tomes as they allow me to pick and choose. As I have all the things I want now from them, I don't really care as much if I don't finish a challenge. They get done or don't get done during my normal gameplay.

I left the game a year or so ago and gave all my mats to my husband, so now I'm back, the mat-gathering challenges suit me as I try to build my mats back up! Again, I don't grind them, I just pick mats up as I bimble along on my questing cat.

ApoAlaia · May 13

Fine the way it is +1 from me.

The 'deeper' the pool the least likely it is to yield multiples of the same objective and the more likely it is to yield 'suboptimal' objectives (either the kind I'd rather not do or the ones where the time to complete vs yield has room for improvement).

I am not expecting to derive much additional entertainment from endless 'go to the place and do the thing' activities, more so if these diverge from my usual ones, so from my PoV practicality and efficiency win.

SeaGtGruff · May 13

I used to worry about rerolling for challenges that rewarded more points, but then I read that even doing the least rewarding challenges will still give me more than enough points to get everything plus have more excess points than can be carried over into the next season, so now I don't worry about it. I've already unlocked all of the pages, including the two bonus pages, and bought everything in the standard version, so unless I end up buying the premium version (which I will probably do before the season ends) so I can buy all of the additional things, there's no reason for me to even worry about doing any more of the challenges this season. I'm sure they designed it that way deliberately, so that players who can't play the game every week and complete all of the weekly challenges will still be able to easily acquire enough points to buy the things they want.

As far as getting all of the weeklies done, I've stopped worrying about doing all of them each week, since any unfinished challenges will carry over into the following week. Even with a limit of 12 challenges at any one time, that's more than enough wiggle room to let some slide from one week to the next. And even if all 12 slots are filled and no more new challenges can be obtained, as stated above the design is such that a certain number of challenges could be missed out on entirely and you could still have enough points to get everything.

And as far as the number of rerolls, if you use up all of your rerolls and get stuck with some challenges you have absolutely no interest in doing, just let those challenges sit undone so they carry over into the next week, at which point you'll get more rerolls which you can use to reroll the undesired challenges.

PoveusRonin · May 13

I just wish they would let you opt out of certain categories. I'm probably never going to run a trial or do much in PvP. If I could opt out of those categories for the weekly rolls, I would be happy with the rest of the system.

Nemesis7884 · May 13

I think they should vary from season to season but keep them relatively contained within a given set, or do that on a weekly basis.... meaning you rotate different "buckets" of challenges but each bucket only has 20-25 different ones...

Otherwise
A) it will be hard to get duplicates / synergies with reroll making your life harder and
B.) You will find way fewer ppl do do world bosses or similar group intended challenges which might be fine for experienced but bad for new players

Apollosipod · May 13

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

I think they should vary from season to season but keep them relatively contained within a given set, or do that on a weekly basis.... meaning you rotate different "buckets" of challenges but each bucket only has 20-25 different ones...

Otherwise
A) it will be hard to get duplicates / synergies with reroll making your life harder and
B.) You will find way fewer ppl do do world bosses or similar group intended challenges which might be fine for experienced but bad for new players

I agree and think this is a good idea. I made this post after getting "new" weekly challenges which were the same things I've been getting the entire time. Your idea would help that a lot

Apollosipod · May 13

PoveusRonin wrote: »

I just wish they would let you opt out of certain categories. I'm probably never going to run a trial or do much in PvP. If I could opt out of those categories for the weekly rolls, I would be happy with the rest of the system.

I agree. I need the variation from the post below yours and I need the ability to not get five rolls of Sanctum Ophidia or taking a Cyrodiil keep. I don't enjoy PVP in ESO and having to do the same trial over and over each week is just boring

AzuraFan · May 13

PoveusRonin wrote: »

I just wish they would let you opt out of certain categories. I'm probably never going to run a trial or do much in PvP. If I could opt out of those categories for the weekly rolls, I would be happy with the rest of the system.

That's a great idea. There could be a challenge setting where you can check the categories you want. Only challenges in those categories would appear for you. I like it!

(And same. I like tomes. I don't like the reroll system as it is right now.)