There's been an extensive amount of criticism and perspectives flooding in on the Night Market, which I'm glad to see, and I wanted to share my own perspectives/criticism of the event zone as well.
To preface, I've been an ESO player since around the Morrowind chapter's release, and since then I've become a somewhat vetted endgame content player - I have good endgame builds (not the greatest, but good), I've run maybe two or three vet trials and a handful of vet dungeons, but for the most part I'm a crafter/trader for most of my playtime.
The Pros
- The zone itself is well done, I appreciate how thoughtfully laid out the hub is, how easy it is to travel in and out of it and get to the area you want to start exploring in. The in-and-out access makes it a lot easier for me to casually hop in and out when I want.
- There's a LOT to do; the different rankings of bosses, the progression track to get the relics, and the amount of quests inside are actually really great to see for a free content update. I've yet to fully figure out the oddities, but I'm actually having fun trying to learn them without a guide.
- Trying New Things. I've never personally gotten involved with tanking, but I decided after seeing a couple posts about the content needing a tank in the group comps, I thought I'd learn how to do it. With the Ebon Armoury set in the loot tables, it made it really easy to get a good tank set and start tanking for random groups.
- This is probably the time I've ever actually wanted to find groups in the Group Finder. Again, I don't usually participate in endgame content, and the handful of times I have were in a guild that's long since disbanded - but now, I actually want to create group finder listings and gather people to go in and fight.
- The difficulty. I know it's a hot topic, but I'm going to say this – the difficulty is enjoyable if you engage with the systems in the game. It's not as stress-free as current overland content, but it's an invitation to look up build guides, learn how to build your skills yourself, investigate sets to make you stronger - for me personally, it's made me learn how I want to gear myself up, and pay more attention to mechanics. Seriously, take some time and just look up and learn about builds, even if you're not a big group-content enjoyer - it might open your eyes up to sets and playstyles that better fit your character and enjoyment of the game.
- The house is FANTASTIC. I love that the vault reflects your bank, and I am also a major fan of being able to access your bank and guild bank inside it without the need of a banking assistant. That's a very new-player friendly approach, and I'm glad they implemented it.
The Cons
- Rewards. I feel like for how much more involved the difficulty is, the rewards for killing bosses doesn't really match up to the investment. Bosses should throw mats at you, and the trash mobs should have a higher drop rate for items, or give you more gold for your trouble. Ultimately, just something to balance the risk vs the reward.
- Communication. I feel like from the get go, the actual difficulty of this zone hadn't been effectively communicated until the launch, which if you were expecting some solo-able content, I'd understand where the frustration would come from when you first engage with it. As best I remember, they said it would encourage group play, but this zone I would say pushes you towards requiring it either through actual grouping, or following a group solo.
- Respawns. The trash mobs respawn SO quickly, that I often don't feel I have the time to properly explore an area for my quests because I need to rush through before I get drawn into combat again. I think it needs to be tweaked so there's a little extra time for you to look around to encourage a little more exploration.
- Quest Markers. This might just be a personal experience, but those quest markers aren't easy to find always, and I feel they might not be appearing from as far away as they should be. One of the quests where you have to find the missing people, I spent 15 minutes looking for him between fighting off the respawning hordes and checking every nook and cranny in the circle, and only found him because another person located his hidey hole. I didn't see the market for him until I was practically on top of him.
I've probably not covered absolutely everything I could say about the Night Market, but I think my final thoughts on it are that it's a really fun zone with engaging content, that has pushed me to get out of my solo-player comfort zone and engage with systems, tools, playstyles and players in ways I haven't in this game for a long time. I'm planning on hosting a couple groups myself in the groupfinder that are going to be newplayer/asual-friendly, because at the end of the day, I want to help people get into this game and its harder content the way the old guard vets got me into it all those years ago.