Hey all. I had a bit of fun in the Night Market yesterday, and thought I'd give my thoughts on it here. I know ZOS sometimes reads reddit, and I hope this can spur some healthy discussion as well.

Introduction

First, critique is not useful without the context of the person providing it. So who am I? I play on PC NA, and I take part in all of ESO's content from PvP to Trials. My work schedule is all over the place, so I don't have the luxury of scheduling to play with dedicated groups. With the exception of one PvP guild, all the guilds I'm in are social or trading guilds.

Alone, I have solo'd veteran DLC dungeons. However, despite doing daily runs, I haven't bothered to go beyond Arc 3 and Aramril's achievement still eludes me.

In group PvE, I play a tank. I PUG veteran hardmode dungeons and normal trials pretty regularly. I have yet to even attempt a veteran trial.

In PvP, I prefer Cyrodiil over battlegrounds. I tend to build for area of effect CC. I enjoy setting up enemies for other nearby allies to finish off, and so focus on debuffs and things like that.

So I'm fairly capable, probably more-so than a lot of players, but also certainly not the best or most experienced player in ESO.

How I've Approached the Event

I went into this event blind, without any knowledge of the mechanics for bosses.

When I first got on yesterday, I swapped into the armory setup that I use for soloing dungeons and had a look around the zones on my own. I did my faction's main quest solo. For me, the trash packs were difficult but not impossible to defeat. However, their respawn timer was so low that it was a harrowing experience (more on that below).

Once I had gotten a feel for things, I swapped into my tank setup and began running groups. I had an autojoin code that I advertised in zone and my social guilds, utilized the group finder, and invited solo players that my group came across.

After a few hours, just with PUGs, I had defeated every boss and every skirmish in the Night Market's overworld. I also had found every lead, at least as far as I can tell, and had acquired every splinter fragment except for the ones that drop from reward coffers.

I have yet to complete a single oddity.

The Good

This event has been fun. I don't know if it has longevity too it, but at least for the first day the chaos and discovery has been really great.

On the mechanical side, many of the bosses and skirmishes use mechanics that are callbacks to other fights in ESO. This means that even if you go into them without any knowledge of what to expect, the group can figure things out as they go. This makes for a really rewarding experience.

For instance, Skittering Skirmish works a lot like Spiral Shadows in Maelstrom Arena. When we pieced it together and managed to win despite many deaths (I had the swarm listed as doing over 100k damage on one of my death recaps! I died because I failed to block a heavy attack. Absolutely insane work on our PUG healers there, keeping me alive through that while I was also holding aggro), it really felt like we had earned it.

Bosses with new mechanics are implemented in really clever ways, as well. My first encounter with Duneripper took place while tanking three trash packs at once. The guy just came out of nowhere and ate me and a few of my group mates. We killed him from the inside, popped back out into an ongoing fight with trash packs, and now I had the Shakedown synergy. This was chaotic, but in a surprisingly fun way. I felt like an adventurer seeing a dangerous area for the first time and surviving by my wits, rather than some nerd in a room who had mechanics memorized.

Lastly, the roaming nature of calamitous bosses adds a real sense of danger and tension. I noted duneripper interrupting a trash pull already, but we had Wailing Bedina wander in to the skirmish we were in the middle of last night. The difficulty jumped up, but when we managed to clear both the skirmish and Wailing Bedina at the same time, it felt amazing.

I do need to stress: This was all with a PUG.

As a tank and support player, I actually feel like an important part of the group and not just an afterthought because someone needs to apply breach and hold the boss still. I get to dive in and save people who are being aggro'd by trash packs, I get to group up the trash in a nice little bunch for the DDs to burn down, and I get to show off my ability to time blocks. Tanking here has been much more enjoyable than it has been in any trial or dungeon.

The Not So Good

I have every fragment now except for the ones that drop from reward coffers. The reason I don't have any of those yet is because I wasn't doing quests. The simple reason is that quests seem to be broken. I would say about 3/4 of the time, the interactable for quests simply does not appear. After a few instances of this, I just stopped picking up quests at all.

As I noted above, the respawn timer on trash packs is incredibly low. The aftermath of that Sorrow's Friend Skirmish and Wailing Bedina doubleteam fight was a rolling battle where enemies just kept respawning in the middle of the courtyard. We'd burn down one group in a few seconds, but by the time we did two more would respawn. Eventually, I had to call for a fighting retreat in group chat - miraculously, everyone listened to me and we fought our way into one of the alleyways and away from the endless respawn of mobs.

I think the number one change to Night Market that could make the overworld zone more palatable to small groups and solo players alike would be to increase the timer on mob respawn.

Small groups don't really have an issue killing the trash packs, and the Brazen and Argent bosses seem difficult but doable with smaller groups, but the respawn time leaves almost no breathing room. That lack of breathing room is the real killer. Even with a large group, it leads to a really stressful experience.

Lastly, not one person in the rolling PUG that I was a part of seemed to know what we were supposed to do when we came across an oddity. We'd activate flamethrowers to attack spiders or raise panels from the floor to bounce a boulder around, and then eventually we wouldn't be able to activate those things anymore and it would seemingly be over. Oddities could really use clearer feedback on what's happening and what you're expected to do with them.

Conclusion

Night Market is difficult, much more than I was expecting it to be, but it is definitely not insurmountable. It's actually quite an enjoyable experience. If quests were fixed and if the mobs were a bit less dense or respawned less frequently, I think it could be great.