The Elder Scrolls Online Community is really struggling with the night market

For years, The Elder Scrolls Online players have been asking for more challenging zones similar to Craglorn, difficulty options for the Overland content, and harder story missions. I've brought it up in several interviews with the team and always had the same acknowledging laugh of “Yeah, we know.” Finally, under its new season model, Zenimax has the freedom to step up, but the complaints have only reversed: now it's too hard.

Yesterday, the limited Night Market event zone went live, offering three factions for players to root for as they launch sorties across Fargrave against some of the most challenging PvE content in the game. In practice, the area is one big ordeal that requires group coordination to survive even rudimentary enemies. To that end, there's an activity finder that helps you match strangers, just like you would for dungeons. It's exactly what community veterans have been clamoring for, a gauntlet that pushes playoff builds to their absolute limit.

But take a look at the game's subreddit and you'll notice a trend. “Another example of ZOS not knowing their own game”, “Is anyone actually having fun?”, “A terrible experience”, “Will the night market fail?”, and so on and so forth. There are of course plenty of valid complaints, such as disappointing loot, mushroomy enemies and not being able to share missions, which will hopefully be addressed and fine-tuned in future updates, but the main complaint that keeps coming up is that you have to be in a group to have a chance.

Too difficult or too stubborn?

At the end of the day, it's an MMO, and that means when you tackle group content, you need to work together as a team and facilitate healers and tanks, not just DPS, for good composition. Organizing the strangers thing can be difficult, but that's where guilds come into play, much like trials. And yes, there are guilds for busy adults who don't always have time to play – they're worth seeking out if you want to try some of the more challenging content on offer but don't have hours of spare time to do so. As u/Naive_Freedom_5145 wrote in one of many posts now appearing trying to address the wave of complaints from other players about difficulty, “The Night Market is the opportunity veteran players have been waiting for to 'level up' the player base.”

“The Night Market fills a gap that hasn't existed since Craglorn v.1, and since it's an event zone, everyone is encouraged to play it,” they wrote. “And obviously some of it bounces. I even saw a post here yesterday where someone said that the mere existence of hard content like the night market in ESO made them not want to play the game. Veteran players should be active in encouraging casuals to play the night market, should be active in chat – promote guilds, promote grouping, offer suggestions, make plans.”

Ultimately, MMOs are social games, and that means jumping into chat to ask for help, form groups, and organize with other players, whether you're struggling or want to make it easier for those who are. Night Market just takes it to its limit, and while it may be jarring to many, a large portion of the player base has been asking for harder PvE content for the better part of a decade. ESO has plenty to offer for a wide variety of playstyles, whether it's large-scale PvP war simulation, smaller-scale deathmatches, tabletop card games, treasure hunting, traditional questing, dungeon digging, etc., and the Night Market simply adds to that tapestry, finally offering veteran players something to do after everything else has become trivia. Solo players may skip it much like PvP players may skip a new dungeon, or how story-driven players may not care about Battlegrounds: the variety of choices is what has kept ESO thriving.

Difficulty options could offer a lifeline for the event (similar to normal and veteran dungeons) to help keep the momentum going, but u/jay_baah put it best in his impassioned post about the night market response; it's “really sad that people are so individualistic in a game where you can easily connect with others.”