Options to Improve ESO Experience

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

Hey DE and community,

Can we talk about improving the Elite Sanctuary Onslaught experience?

De built a fun game mode, hack n slash as fast as you can to keep the mode from ending.  The pacing is great because you cant let up, and infinite is not possible (I think... but folks be crazy). 

The problem though is that you left a few holes that creates a large negative experience for those actually playing this mode (in my case nearly 50% of the time...).  Simply players using ESO to power level gear, the equivalent of a dine and ditch, conpletely derails this game mode.  Normaly I dont care, but in this game mode it has a real impact on getting to those reward pools.  Furthmore get stuck in a host transfer, and players beyond the new host may have an additional 15-30s delay loading in, which is a serious hurt when pushing rounds 7+.

This really turns it from a fun to engage with game mode to an utter frustration.  Yes yes I could game chat, form a fixed team with a commited 8 rounds so that I get the 2-4% chance pull slightly easier but in all honesty I'm lazy, don't wannt sit in recruiting chat, or genuinely enjoy the unknown that comes with a public match when game modes are played as they were design to be played.  

So what can we do about this?  Well let's look at a few ways to disincentivize the use of this game mode as a mere power leveling tool.

Note these are merely possible approaches considering that the timer reaches 0 has no down side, unlike other game modes where rewards are take em or leave em, you walk away will all your drops from prior stages no matter what.

 

Approaches

1.  Force players to bring in only maxed weapons and companions.  (Note: Lvl 30 warframes are currently already required, but weapons/companions are not).

Pro - no power leveling, but can still grind for operator school points if you have a lens equipped.

Con - being able to level gear does provide a nice feeling of progress.

My personal take - Not a huge fan but an acceptable trade off.  I still enjoy leveling gear in an odd slot while hacking and slashing and working towards those elusive drops.  I might engage slightly less, but at least wouldmt have an incentive to use this for other than the design intent and would likely reduce the frequency of early drop outs.

 

2. One through, all through.  No option to ditch if a player jumps through the portal.

Pro - Players commited to complete the session when they sign up for ESO. Reduced incentive for players to leave (abort only option), fewer host transfers, no load in to find an instant lost waiting for you whole your poor ally tried their best to cover the gap in your absence.

Con - players forced to continue longer than they may like.

My personal take - I prefer this route.  When signing up for ESO, I'd know im reasonably committed to up to 10 rounds and not have the dine and ditch frustrations.  Sure players could just stop contributing, but this in turn would be the same impact, if not less, than what is happening now.  Those players would likely migrate to other game modes that are less time/team effort sensitive die to the time efficiency shift. Furthermore we would then have fewer host transfers and have one less pinch point.  There are plenty of other grinding spots for power leveling to absorb these players (looking at you Sedna).

 

All in all, I'm sure there are other trade offs I am missing, or ideas you have, thus do feel free to share as these are only some starter thoughts.  More importantly to me is that when new game modes such as these are developed, DE put some effort into disincentivizing players from using these game modes for less than their design Intent.  After all, we gamers will always take advantage when we can.

Love it, hate it, indifferent to it, feel free to share.

Cheers,

Wanderer

[AConfusedBird]

this should probably be posted in feedback, since it's directed at DE.

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

5 minutes ago, AConfusedBird said:

this should probably be posted in feedback, since it's directed at DE.

But also to solicite community discussion. 

=-)

I just used DE as a focal point for my directed monolog.

lightly edited the opening to make that more clear.

Cheers

 

[Keiyadan]

vor 16 Minuten schrieb (PS4)TheWanderer17:

Approaches

1.  Force players to bring in only maxed weapons and companions.  (Note: Lvl 30 warframes are currently already required, but weapons/companions are not).

Pro - no power leveling, but can still grind for operator school points if you have a lens equipped.

Con - being able to level gear does provide a nice feeling of progress.

My personal take - Not a huge fan but an acceptable trade off.  I still enjoy leveling gear in an odd slot while hacking and slashing and working towards those elusive drops.  I might engage slightly less, but at least wouldmt have an incentive to use this for other than the design intent and would likely reduce the frequency of early drop outs.

sounds like then the game mode will only played mostly solo because if someone is done there there will be no reason to go back there and that you have to do the 8 waves solo anyways and i did that often

vor 16 Minuten schrieb (PS4)TheWanderer17:

2. One through, all through.  No option to ditch if a player jumps through the portal.

so had a lot of bugs with those portals event teleports in new zone, old ones and mutch more so it is just easyer to follow the host or do it yourself anyways.

and then i lately tried to level things there guess what it wasent even worth it eso was fully of so many people that bring no exp i could do a high level spy and got more.
well got a clan mate help me out in SO there i could do some leveling but well. that might just be my exprience with ESO but i guess if i want to farm standing i still considering going there because then it does not matter at all makeing 8 zone or follow the host or other players to the zone they want to reach.

[Dauggie]

that;s straight up bad. you just want people to stay longer, buy why? those who already got all rewards from it only do this mode for focus/affinity farm. there is no other reason to do this. also the efficiency points gain drop so hard in higher zones, by that i don't mean 50-60zones just around 12 zones you will find that. even with one shot khora build it gets hard to maintain the efficiency. so most you can do is 16zones with good squad. so basically just run 8zones 2 times, Solo if you don't want to recruit. 

also your point was.. if one player goes in others have to forcefully get in, that's like asking for getting trolled. aborting will lose all your rewards/XP

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

8 minutes ago, Keiyadan said:

sounds like then the game mode will only played mostly solo because if someone is done there there will be no reason to go back there and that you have to do the 8 waves solo anyways and i did that often

so had a lot of bugs with those portals event teleports in new zone, old ones and mutch more so it is just easyer to follow the host or do it yourself anyways

To your first point.  Is it better to have higher engagement that results in more frustration for those actually playing the game mode as intended or lower engagement with players actually focused on the overall objective?

Note - changing yo reward pools is always a great way to refresh engagement over time.  Im not sure relics really provide alot of incentive due to higher frequency elsewhere, even if these are radiant.  Reward pool is outside ny core objective with regard to this thread.

To your second point.  Its never easy getting these things working.  Doesnt mean it can't or shouldn't be done if there's a clear breakdown between design intent and actual use of.  The obscure approach would be to hijack existing functions to make this happen, for instance loki teleport to the portal location once a player engages with the teleport.  Of course I dont have access to the inner workings so certainly am not saying that is a workable solution, in sure it is far more complicated than presented.

All and all, goal is to attempt to match intent with actual more so than I am experiencing today.  It really is a great game mode, of which more than half the time is headed to an early flop due to the current usage of it.  This just makes it more frustrating than enjoyable as it just becomes a waste of time, which is a shame.

[DrivaMain]

Your proposal only cause more frustations than improving the experience. Scrap your idea and try these instead.

1. Reduce efficiency drain so nuke frames are not mandatory for Zone 8 runs.

2. Allow gear items to be used in onslaught, but put cooldowns on it like Steel Path.

3. Move captura scenes to Simaris offerings. They are just there to dilute the drop table.

These 3 points are enough to significantly improve Sanctuary Onslaught’s experience.

 

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

5 minutes ago, Dauggie said:

that;s straight up bad. you just want people to stay longer, buy why? those who already got all rewards from it only do this mode for focus/affinity farm. there is no other reason to do this. also the efficiency points gain drop so hard in higher zones, by that i don't mean 50-60zones just around 12 zones you will find that. even with one shot khora build it gets hard to maintain the efficiency. so most you can do is 16zones with good squad. so basically just run 8zones 2 times, Solo if you don't want to recruit. 

also your point was.. if one player goes in others have to forcefully get in, that's like asking for getting trolled. aborting will lose all your rewards/XP

The reason you can do this, is it is capped by the efficiency not being truly endless.

Currently, having 50% of teams dropping after 2 or 4 rounds feels just like a troll when you wanna run it out to 8-10.  Out of 8 runs, 2 had players go 8 rounds, 2 had 2 players go 8 rounds, 4 had fallen apart at 4 rounds or 6 rounds, often with a multistage dropping.  Atleast there'd be an expectation upfront that we are in this til its over.

Is solo the answer for a co-op game?  It certainly can be, but not how I like to play.  Not really what I image they want as design intent, even if it is an option.

Hell I'd settle for a toggle that lets me declare i wanna go the distance, or 6-10 rounds, and priority matches me with like minded, but that ain't happening.  Would be so nice in so many places, but would likely just lead to more carries than ever.

I do realize there is no grand solution, just the current early drop out rate is ridiculous for a 60+ level mission.

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

9 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

Your proposal only cause more frustations than improving the experience. Scrap your idea and try these instead.

1. Reduce efficiency drain so nuke frames are not mandatory for Zone 8 runs.

2. Allow gear items to be used in onslaught, but put cooldowns on it like Steel Path.

3. Move captura scenes to Simaris offerings. They are just there to dilute the drop table.

These 3 points are enough to significantly improve Sanctuary Onslaught’s experience.

 

Valid, though I suppose #1 would make it easy, and for me atleast would significantly reduce fun factor of the mode.  Then its just another thing to merely casually grind rather than the current feeling of needing to rush.

Yeah the nuking being a need, really is a design drag.  You could keep the efficacy drop rate as is, but award how you kill dffierently as to provide less value for nuke skill kills vs other kills, but then the spawn rate would have to very or some other chaos due to this being a huge limiting factor to success?  Just spit balling.  Would hate to lose the one thing that makes this mode feel different than every other mode we have.  Not really practical as stated.

[Keiyadan]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb (PS4)TheWanderer17:

Is solo the answer for a co-op game?  It certainly can be, but not how I like to play.  Not really what I image they want as design intent, even if it is an option.

well back in the days befor all of eso and alot of content people would go rota c almost everytime i was there i played this open groups and i miss it yeah but the thing is more and more new stuff is just way worse played in open groups instead of just playing it solo. and there are to sides to this Devs and Players seem guided this way open groups mostly end i chaos while closed groups will still be efficient.
most of the times i will try to follow people to get to reach the goal they have but other times im just done.

[lnfine]

The reason most people even play ESO is to level stuff. If you remove that, you have better chances of finding a party for lunaro.

Just bring something that can carry you to round 8 yourself in case other people drop off.

[Veridian]

They should add bosses after wave 8 that drop random cool cosmetics.

That way, the usuals will keep farming for affinity and organized groups would have a different target.

No clue how to make a boss tho. I'd even take a huge sponge with various 1hko attacks.

[KosmicKerman]

Too lazy to use recruit chat to get a squad to go 8 rounds and can’t be bothered to equip a frame that can solo later rounds of ESO. I don’t think the problem here is ESO’s design. If your goal is to go 8 rounds+ you should be equipping a frame that can do that easily rather than trying to force other players to conform to your whims. The best fix to ESO not mentioned by OP is to change the ability cooldowns so that more frames can be used to successfully clear later rounds. 

[ZarTham]

DE has to first, improve overall exp gain, rework affinity share and implement an exp boost per forma.

Everybody knows that SO/ESO is mostly used to level gear, DE has to address the affinity gain issue in order to solve this type of problems for SO/ESO and future content.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Sounds like you're playing public not everyone wants to stay forever this is why you find people that want to do the same thing as you

Also feedback section no excuses.

 

[Luciole77]

leecher detected.

[vegetosayajin]

If you put good rewards in... maybe.Now we don't have those. (focus grind is terrible in SO/ESO compared to tridolons, so that's not a pro)
We have SP survival if you want tougher enemies.
So I see only negatives from this topic, because this will not make ESO more preferable, just be abandoned.
Better rewards or not worth it.
For now it's one of the perfect places for leveling(you may see it as a con but that's why you see so many people in there).

The other way to make it more enjoyable is to make it truly endless somehow( a.k.a. survival 2.0) and not be like "aah I reached zone 14-15 and that's it I guess".
I would love to have a survival mission with all different factions every couple of minutes. It would make it way harder, also camping would be kinda strange if even possible.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

9 hours ago, (PS4)TheWanderer17 said:

Yes yes I could game chat, form a fixed team with a commited 8 rounds so that I get the 2-4% chance pull slightly easier but in all honesty I'm lazy, don't wannt sit in recruiting chat, or genuinely enjoy the unknown that comes with a public match when game modes are played as they were design to be played.  

that's a you problem then, and everyone says they enjoy public games, until they get a clueless squad that Fs everything up.

10 hours ago, (PS4)TheWanderer17 said:

Well let's look at a few ways to disincentivize the use of this game mode as a mere power leveling tool.

for the record, stopping Power-levelling in ESO just means Hydron and other spots would see more traffic. you wouldn't be dealing with the problem at the source, just making it more convenient for yourself, since YOU don't have to deal with seeing it personally. 

10 hours ago, (PS4)TheWanderer17 said:

players forced to continue longer than they may like.

not an acceptable downside IMO. we had years of this crap with how endless modes used to be. people should be allowed to leave whenever they want and keep what they earned until that point, anything else is illogical.

sorry but most of your ideas aren't really improvements. my advice would be to stop being lazy and try recruit chat.

[(PSN)Lollybomb]

Ah yes, force everyone to stay as long as one person demands.  Great idea that totally won't annoy just about everyone who isn't a troll.  Fun fact, back before we had individual extraction for endless missions, it required more than half the squad to agree to stay.  A split vote (two staying, two trying to leave) would go on the side of the leavers, even if one changed their mind.  Eventually DE agreed that players should at least have the option of leaving non wave based endless missions without requiring anyone else to agree with them, so I hope they'd be smart enough to not suddenly flip around and say "yeah, we're totally cool with the vote on mission continuation being left to a single person."

[(XBOX)OneChicago51]

Slower efficiency drain would be really nice. I've only made it to wave 8 4 times. MANY fails at 6 or 7 even with all the builds that are suggested which led to to just quit the whole mode. Only have one weapon piece of one of the guns after all this time.

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

14 hours ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

that's a you problem then, and everyone says they enjoy public games, until they get a clueless squad that Fs everything up.

for the record, stopping Power-levelling in ESO just means Hydron and other spots would see more traffic. you wouldn't be dealing with the problem at the source, just making it more convenient for yourself, since YOU don't have to deal with seeing it personally. 

not an acceptable downside IMO. we had years of this crap with how endless modes used to be. people should be allowed to leave whenever they want and keep what they earned until that point, anything else is illogical.

sorry but most of your ideas aren't really improvements. my advice would be to stop being lazy and try recruit chat.

I find it funny that you seem to think ESO is for leveling gear and using that as your 'acceptable' pivot point.  Having alot of low quality matches just means high frustration rate for those wanting to have high quality matches.

Sorry but the game mode was not designed to level gear.  And if you reflect on that, you quickly see that it being a common source used to just level gear, immediately conflicts with the actual design of the game mode.  Thus my issue with the current state.

Hedron is not speed dependent, and not as sharply affected as ESO is per the rush based approach to the game mode.  I do weigh importance of improving ESO (60 lvl starting) game mode as higher than hedron (40 lvl starting) game mode.  It is at very least slight closer to being endgame content, if you wish to think of it in that manor.

15 hours ago, Luciole77 said:

leecher detected.

It's often actually me trying to carry forward players ill equipped.  But dealing with host transfers and constant player drops, the game mode gets completely compromised.  Thus why I'm interested in creative solutions.

Sorry you assume the worst in people and lack creative ideas for furthering discussion topics.

13 hours ago, (PS4)Lollybomb said:

Ah yes, force everyone to stay as long as one person demands.  Great idea that totally won't annoy just about everyone who isn't a troll.  Fun fact, back before we had individual extraction for endless missions, it required more than half the squad to agree to stay.  A split vote (two staying, two trying to leave) would go on the side of the leavers, even if one changed their mind.  Eventually DE agreed that players should at least have the option of leaving non wave based endless missions without requiring anyone else to agree with them, so I hope they'd be smart enough to not suddenly flip around and say "yeah, we're totally cool with the vote on mission continuation being left to a single person."

I think the ESO case can be treated slgihtly differently as there is actually a soft cap to how far one can go.  Comparatively other endless modes haven't had an soft cap since 2016 or so when our power was quite limited. 

Though I think your missing my point overall that the ESO design is completely trash when you have folks there just to power level and leave in short order, thus my interest is in disincentivizing this rather than accepting the 'just work around it' which just leaves it in the broken pile like so many other things in this game. 

For me, public matching is fun and important to my engagement in warframe, and I presume this is true for many others.  To say there are options other than public, is not a healthy approach when trying to find creative solutions to help game modes actualize their potential.

 

 

11 hours ago, (XB1)OneChicago51 said:

Slower efficiency drain would be really nice. I've only made it to wave 8 4 times. MANY fails at 6 or 7 even with all the builds that are suggested which led to to just quit the whole mode. Only have one weapon piece of one of the guns after all this time.

See i feel the only thing it has going for it is the rapid pacing, otherwise it just becomes a survival like mode.  So finding a way to keep the pace, but minimize the current use cases that don't match the design intent is a better route.

****

Thus far I've yet to see an idea here that really nails it (design vs acrualized), my own or others, which isn't surprising as its a tough nut to crack. 

Hm... Maybe the answer is as simple as reducing the experience earning in ESO to 50% or 25% of the current rate.