Sarannah wrote: »

Let's just agree to disagree, but I think any reward is too much. And that handing out dungeon level rewards, especially veteran dungeon level rewards, could crash both the in-game economy for those upgrade materials as well as massively lower the incentives to do grouping content(dungeons). ZOS needs to be very careful with how this feature is implemented, as it could alter the game in many unexpected negative ways. Even just feeling missing out on (small) rewards will do so.

Question: Will showing/hiding questmarkers also be part of the difficulty? Making the game more difficult than only following a questmarker.
Question: Will disabling add-ons also be part of the increased difficulty? Making the game more difficult and more about player skill than just following on-screen add-on commands on when to block/dodge/use food/where to find everything/etc. Players often forget that add-ons massively lower the game's difficulty in many ways.

PS: The above posts pushing for extra rewards are very telling on how important increased difficulty in overland really is. As it seems the rewards for increased difficulty in overland are more important than what may happen to the difficulty itself or to the state of the game when this is implemented.

With your opinion, just take out all rewards in the game. Let's make all gear white for veteran dungeons and give no achievements or rewards for veteran hard mode dungeons. Right?

Also, you can absolutely fight naked, take off your sets, use no CP, etc. You can do challenges if you want to like that and I have actually. OR your game's developer can create a polished optional mode for the game that is inviting and exciting for people to re-experience content with more difficulty and a feeling of exploration. To drive newer players in and veteran players alike, you can add little rewards like a guar mount for completing shadowfen's story 100% on this difficulty. Why is this bad? Do you prefer to not be rewarded in games?

I haven't been by in a while. For me there's just... too much. It feels more like a second job than a fun game. I'm not getting paid to play, and if I'm not having fun, then what's the point? A lot of content and systems felt like they were trying to compel me to play without being compelling -- which is to say ESO started to feel like I HAD to play it in order to stay "caught up" but the reasons for doing so were hollow.

I tend to pop in once a year for cake. That's about it. That's the only FOMO I allow myself from this game now.

I'd rather do creative pursuits, like writing or streaming, or just hang out with friends, or play games that don't have as much time and energy investment.

So, yeah. FOMO burnout, basically, and I'd rather do other things with my time.

I appreciate the sexy orcs though. Thanks for that.

I don't see how adding an optional difficulty mode for Overland is a bad change, considering that it is more than half of the entire game. ZOS even said that it won't be some sort of separate ''Vet Overland Instance'', so the playerbase won't be fragmented into different layers.

Is wanting an optional mode that is not balanced around lvl3 white gear, no food, no set, no cp characters seriously considered a toxic and elitist request?

Lagzee wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

This is all so accurate, and well said. The people who dont realize that population has been seriously dwindling are either in denial, or mainly play solo. This is simply a matter of fact and to deny it is to deny reality. I have never understood why people deny that steam is a good metric to judge by, but heres some more.

absolutely. i'm no expert, but i understand how statistics and sample sizes work. although i totally agree with the steam data... i don't even need steam data to see the writing on the wall. as a solo player who avoids group content like the plague and is perfectly happy with just overland questing and living under my little rock, i can clearly see how populations have drastically dropped by looking at the BMU guild i am in along with my trading guilds that used to be capped out on players. i can also see it with the economy. i never used to get listings back in the mail. now i hardly ever sell anything. was just saying to a friend the other day "you know the economy is dead when you can list herbs at the low end of ttc and they never sell..."

Sarannah wrote: »

Let's just agree to disagree, but I think any reward is too much. And that handing out dungeon level rewards, especially veteran dungeon level rewards, could crash both the in-game economy for those upgrade materials as well as massively lower the incentives to do grouping content(dungeons). ZOS needs to be very careful with how this feature is implemented, as it could alter the game in many unexpected negative ways. Even just feeling missing out on (small) rewards will do so.

Question: Will showing/hiding questmarkers also be part of the difficulty? Making the game more difficult than only following a questmarker.
Question: Will disabling add-ons also be part of the increased difficulty? Making the game more difficult and more about player skill than just following on-screen add-on commands on when to block/dodge/use food/where to find everything/etc. Players often forget that add-ons massively lower the game's difficulty in many ways.

PS: The above posts pushing for extra rewards are very telling on how important increased difficulty in overland really is. As it seems the rewards for increased difficulty in overland are more important than what may happen to the difficulty itself or to the state of the game when this is implemented.

The reward in dungeons are the sets and not the purple upgrade materials. So yes, I agree that a random story boss shouldn't drop you a Turning Tide chest piece or Aegis Caller daggers, but giving purple pieces is to be expect as that is the case for all veteran content in the game so far. The price of purple materials is already extremely low and they are very accessible to all levels of players. Personally, I don't really care since I'm at a point where gold is absolutely meaningless in the game, but it would just make no sense for overland to be the only content in the game where optional difficulty increase wouldn't give you increased rewards.

Sarannah wrote: »

Catering to the tiny few who want tougher overland and granting them better rewards(no matter how tiny), will make overland content feel demotivating to play for other players who do not or can't turn up the difficulty.

Implying that only a tiny minority of players want a harder overland experience is just wild, especially when it's backed up by 0 proof or explanation.

Here is a video of a boss fight in the newest zone story. No spoilers, it's the most reused enemy in the entire game...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VVb7eHCE7kA

This is what passes as a boss fight! Addons are not what made that fight easy, experience didn't help either, my gear was all purple, 6pc light armour, stage 4 vampire so no health regen. The enemies simply just don't fight back. I played through the entire quest line without a single button press (apart from the ones forced by mechanics) and it's an absolute joke when it comes to actual gameplay. The tutorial required more button presses than most of the boss fights and that's not even an exaggeration!

shadoza wrote: »

If the folks demanding the difficulty level are not disciplined enough to change their gear from dungeon to overland to create a challenge, what makes you believe they have the discipline to use a challenge toggle?

To make the current questing/overland content a challenge, you have to ignore every combat feature the game has to offer. If you have any sets, the content is trivial, if you have any healing you wont die, don't even think about using CPs, ults are out of the question as they will melt the boss, you can go grab a coffee mid fight if you engage with subclassing or scribing etc etc. I'm 100% sure that you could beat every story quest with nothing but fists and Resolving Vigor and it will not be difficult only tedious.

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Bad writing and bad new content is bad, but it doesn't stop us from going back and enjoying the old content.
However, bad combat and gameplay does.

Still they can't keep the playerbase interested for years with old content alone.

metheglyn wrote: »

I didn't get quite the same evil/good sentiment you did; "opportunistic use of forbidden powers" doesn't equate to evil necessarily. And the necromancer description was pretty matter-of-fact with no morality stated. Templar does say "holy warrior," however, and warden is described as a protector, so those do seem more good aligned than any of the others. But mostly I didn't pick up on any definitive intended alignment in the descriptions.

Taking the sorcerer as an example, I think this does sounds quite "immoral" at least:
"daedric pacts"
"dark magic"
"opportunistic use of forbidden powers"
And I think for some sorcerer characters people play this doesn't apply at all.

As well as sorcerer npcs, by the way - we know there are many uses of magic in TES lore, the whole range from "moral" and altruistic to, well, the opposite of that. But the sorcerer class seems to focus very much on only one very specific idea of what a sorcerer is supposed to be. I think part of what makes me be sceptical about this is that the class name is rather generic. It's not "dark conjurer" or whatever, it's just "sorcerer", which is a very broad term.

shadoza wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Let's just agree to disagree, but I think any reward is too much. And that handing out dungeon level rewards, especially veteran dungeon level rewards, could crash both the in-game economy for those upgrade materials as well as massively lower the incentives to do grouping content(dungeons). ZOS needs to be very careful with how this feature is implemented, as it could alter the game in many unexpected negative ways. Even just feeling missing out on (small) rewards will do so.

Question: Will showing/hiding questmarkers also be part of the difficulty? Making the game more difficult than only following a questmarker.
Question: Will disabling add-ons also be part of the increased difficulty? Making the game more difficult and more about player skill than just following on-screen add-on commands on when to block/dodge/use food/where to find everything/etc. Players often forget that add-ons massively lower the game's difficulty in many ways.

PS: The above posts pushing for extra rewards are very telling on how important increased difficulty in overland really is. As it seems the rewards for increased difficulty in overland are more important than what may happen to the difficulty itself or to the state of the game when this is implemented.

The reward in dungeons are the sets and not the purple upgrade materials. So yes, I agree that a random story boss shouldn't drop you a Turning Tide chest piece or Aegis Caller daggers, but giving purple pieces is to be expect as that is the case for all veteran content in the game so far. The price of purple materials is already extremely low and they are very accessible to all levels of players. Personally, I don't really care since I'm at a point where gold is absolutely meaningless in the game, but it would just make no sense for overland to be the only content in the game where optional difficulty increase wouldn't give you increased rewards.

Sarannah wrote: »

Catering to the tiny few who want tougher overland and granting them better rewards(no matter how tiny), will make overland content feel demotivating to play for other players who do not or can't turn up the difficulty.

Implying that only a tiny minority of players want a harder overland experience is just wild, especially when it's backed up by 0 proof or explanation.

Here is a video of a boss fight in the newest zone story. No spoilers, it's the most reused enemy in the entire game...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VVb7eHCE7kA

This is what passes as a boss fight! Addons are not what made that fight easy, experience didn't help either, my gear was all purple, 6pc light armour, stage 4 vampire so no health regen. The enemies simply just don't fight back. I played through the entire quest line without a single button press (apart from the ones forced by mechanics) and it's an absolute joke when it comes to actual gameplay. The tutorial required more button presses than most of the boss fights and that's not even an exaggeration!

shadoza wrote: »

If the folks demanding the difficulty level are not disciplined enough to change their gear from dungeon to overland to create a challenge, what makes you believe they have the discipline to use a challenge toggle?

To make the current questing/overland content a challenge, you have to ignore every combat feature the game has to offer. If you have any sets, the content is trivial, if you have any healing you wont die, don't even think about using CPs, ults are out of the question as they will melt the boss, you can go grab a coffee mid fight if you engage with subclassing or scribing etc etc. I'm 100% sure that you could beat every story quest with nothing but fists and Resolving Vigor and it will not be difficult only tedious.

I am 100% sure one could not and that statement is stale.
If add-ons did not make the content easier, players wouldn't use them.
I just played a level 10 character and got rolled by the final attack of a soul reaper. The attacks were just higher than my health and recovery rates.
When one works in an echo-chamber, one voice sounds like a thousand. I believe it is a small percentage of players that are demanding more difficulty in overland. I stand on my statement: The folks that are demanding overland difficult have not shown the disciple to increase difficult where they can do it easier. If they did, they would use overland gear and empty their CP tray of combat assistance. They won't do it. They make excuses instead. This habit is not going to change with a new difficulty option. That feature is a waste of development time.

I refuse to believe the vast majority of players who have downloaded addons have done so to make overland content easier for them. They are really helpful and useful for dungeons and trials, but not needed for overland content.

As for the bosses using only fists and vigor claim... no gear, no cp, no consumables. Pictures, logs and a video in the spoiler ↓
Again, tedious but not difficult. If a player understands and follows the few core combat mechanics such as, block reduces damage, dodge roll let's you dodge an attack and heavy attack restores resources, every single quest boss and overland fight becomes trivial. Which is exactly what you highlighted here

shadoza wrote: »

I just played a level 10 character and got rolled by the final attack of a soul reaper. The attacks were just higher than my health and recovery rates.

Why didn't you block or dodge roll it?
The game doesn't punish people enough for ignoring the fundamental combat mechanics, thus people don't even bother to use them. In my fist fight I didn't roll one big hit with a really long wind up and it didn't even kill me when I have no gear on. That's just unacceptable in my opinion.

The problem is that ZOS uses each new expansion to draw in new players and use the new zone as their first one. It isn't required or even advised to go to the original starter islands first to get used to the game, instead they use the new zone as the tutorial zone. So now we are in a situation where every single zone is built for new players to function as a tutorial, but there is barely anything for anyone who has gotten past that skill level.
The worst part is that these new zones even fail as tutorials, because unlike a tutorial, they don't require the player to actually play the mechanic correctly.

Only if other players can't see it. There is already way too much flash bang.