The current 14 Veteran Ranks are tied to

Why a lot HATE veteran ranks

Why the Veteran Ranks works...

What options are possible?

Detailed opinions on some options

Remove Veteran Ranks and scale everything down to level 50 - That is a lot to get rid of with the sweep of a hand if they were to just take every Veteran 14 and downgrade them, their gear, and everything else to level 50. While most want to "get rid" of veteran ranks, it is likely to alienate the player base that has stayed here for a long time. If you had a v14 Valkyn Skoria helmet, would you really want it downgraded to level 50 with matching stats to someone's v1 helm? And what would happen to the skill points? Would they just go poof and those hours of grinding would go away? Yeah, that is likely to *** off a LOT of folks. This also would make doing Cadwell's Silver or gold pointless except for some achievements and Champion Point leveling, which grinding already give more. This also would severely care bear the difficulty level on a lot of dungeons and trials.



Scale everything down, but use Champion points to level lock certain areas and gear - Same as above, but this would cause issues due to the account wide sharing Champion Points that has put a gap between year long players and new players. The grind to get a champion point us also fairly high as well, so you’re falling into the same cliff as before.



Lie to us that Veteran Ranks are going to be removed - Some already think this is an option ZOS has taken, but promising to remove it with no real intention to would be fairly stupid. It would be better to defend it or ignore the complaints from a PR standpoint. ZOS has had a habit in the past about leaving out details with things, but for the most part they have carefully chosen their words so you can never say they were wrong. There have been things that they've tried and had to abandoned or is taking longer than expected (spell crafting or dark brotherhood), but I have trouble catching them on anything more than technicalities.



Convert Veteran Ranks into more levels, 20 to 40, and rework gear and areas - this seems the most likely, and the thesis of my post. This will remove some of the cliff and is much easier to convert. Your progression will be much more evident and you'll have more bonuses between prior Veteran Ranks. You're still cramming a lot of content in a few levels though, so there will still be a cliff of EXP unless they raise the cap to 80 or 100, which then in turn would separate a lot of high levels and low levels, and you risk flooding the player with skill point to a point to make them useless. There is still a question how the veteran dungeons, Craglorn, and Champion point system would work, which could kick in at level 50. Though it could simply open up all of them to any level, you'd just have to survive the high levels. The non-veteran campaigns could eventually be level locked as well to give lower levels a better chance, while the battle buff could be made to affect anyone 10 levels below max.

Why is it taking so long?

Why give us 2 more Veteran ranks?

So, a lot of folks have been pissed off with veteran rank 16 and keep asking "When are they going to remove Veteran Ranks?" I'm here to say that there is, at least in the context that most think. Instead, it seems much more likely that they will be converted into the leveling system, say level 70 or 80, at be even 100, and the experience grind smoothed out.- Gear, including 2 tiers of sets (v1 to v5 and v6 to v12/14)- 14 attribute points- 14 skill points- start of veteran mode dungeons- start of Craglorn- Trials (being tied to Craglorn)- start of champion point system- lock out of non-veteran PVP- Stats granted by different itemization- It takes a lot of experience to get a rank- Your growth between Veteran Ranks is lower than from level to level- The challenge in each zone is the same, and rarely scales up as you get further- Certain dungeons/trials have an unsaid mid-level requirement around v6to v8 to be able to survive an be useful with stats and DPS, otherwise that person typically needs to be carried- In PVP it feels there is a huge survival gap between v1 and v10+Most of these issues can be attributed to the fact they crammed 40 x 2 levels (80 levels) of content into 10 Veteran ranks (the other 2 factions stories), and then another 10 to 20 levels into 2 to 4 veteran ranks (Craglorn). So instead of getting 5 to 10 levels for completing everything in a zone you get a single veteran rank. It is an interesting way to let us experience the stories, most other MMOS would require us to reroll a character. In ESO they let us experience it all over again without the reroll and make it challenging. If they gave the same progression though, most would be veteran rank 14 by the end of the 2nd area, leaving for a dull play through on Cadwell's Silver. But this leaves a huge cliff of experience, and your still not a powerful enough to do most end game content till you hit mid-levels. This led to the current protest most have today.- Remove Veteran Ranks and scale everything down to level 50- Scale everything down, but use Champion points to level lock certain areas and gear- Lie to us that Veteran Ranks are going to be removed- Convert Veteran Ranks into more levels, 20 to 40, and rework gear and areas(spoiler tagged so you skimmers can skip!)- Priority was given to the console release for several months- Imperial city and DLC is likely getting priority to keep folks with plus membership or to buy crowns- Removing or converting requires reworking the pacing of zones- Removing or converting requires redoing the itemization- Removing or converting requires rebalancing the PVP aspects- Removing or converting requires scaling the dungeon challenges- Removing or converting requires a LOT of PR (the vocal public views any change as bad)- Converting requires more skills to dump excess skill points into.- Change, in general, takes time. We had promises for better stamina builds that took nearly 3/4s of a year since they announced it- Cyrodiil is coming and as @Demonoid has data mined and its speculated there will be a full zone's worth of questing and leveling.- If they plan to convert, this will lead to a smoother progression for each zone's content- It gives ZOS breathing time before a conversion and a testing ground for tweaking the pacing.- It gives us something to progress with other than gear farming or champion point grinding- Gives ZOS more reason to sell DLC, with 2 new veteran ranks to level up folks are going to be looking for some place fresh to play.- Gives a new item set level lock level for new sets in the DLC.So for most of you folks freaking out, I'd say just relax, the bad parts aregoing to be converted over to make the progression simpler. We're seeing some of those changes now and by the time they flip the switch its likely there will be less problems.Of course most of this is opinion based and if our glorious overlords see fit we could all be turned into cabbage and cheese by the time we see the Veteran Ranks gone =3