How are you going to do this without separating players?

If I play on hardest setting and struggle with a fight, and then some other player cames in and one shots everything, because he plays on normal settings, how would that make me feel?
If the player engaging in my fight will suddenly feel that mobs are longer to kill he wouldnt like that either. I really can't imagine a way to do it without separating players.

IMHO current overland difficulty is so trivial that it is immersion breaking. This topic is already 4 years old, before it was pined here, complaints about no difficulty option were appearing on the forums very often.
Please finally do it and do it right.

I love this game and really want it to be around in couple of years, but I really feel like its the last call for change.
If the new leadership policy is true and not just words, please try to adress all those still unresolved problems that pop up on the forums every month for years now, Vet overland is just one of them
(Other examples: dungeon ques - fake healers/fake tanks; rushing through dungeons when someone wants to finish quest or enjoy the story; ball groups in cyrodill; too much grind/low drops and bad RNG; rewards system, crossplay and so on just ask Kevin, he will know what we usually grumble about)

It was nice to see more communication and some questions being answered.

Tannus15 wrote: »

This is a crazy statement



Firstly on consumables and hybridization.

I don't even know what to say to this.
The spreadsheet and "balance" are arbitrary rules you guys have just made up.

I don't know any other way to read the comments on consumables other than that you have a bunch of values for "balance" that you're trying to adhere to, but potions and food don't currently fit those values, so if you change them at all you'll be "forced" to nerf them which would suck for everyone, so you've decided to NOT change them at all.



I don't understand this statement. You've been building content around the level of power available according to your standards, but part of that is consumables which have been unchanged for years, but you haven't been building content around them so they should be nerfed? have you been building content around the power level in the game or the power level in the spreadsheet which doesn't match the game?

What are you doing?
If your "rules" are making the game less fun, CHANGE THE RULES.
If changing something means it should be nerfed, keeping it the same is ALSO A CHOICE.
Using "well it's old balance so we don't need to balance it now, but if we did it would need to be nerfed, so we're instead choosing to not change it" is the wildest, weirdest justification i've ever seen.

Let me put it another way, from a player perspective:

You can take every instance of "major brutality" and "major sorcerery" and combine them.
You can take every instance of "major savagery" and "major prophecy" and combine them.
This will have no negative effects on the game. It doesn't need to be balanced, it just needs to be done.
If the reason you're not doing that is because "Unstoppable" potions are unbalanced then that's INSANE.

Secondly, regarding gear, yes, some of it's subjective. But other things are objective. Pillar of nirn and flame blossom are subjective. they are both good in different circumstances.

Poisonous Serpent isn't subjectively bad, it's just garbage.
Mothers Sorrow isn't subjectively weaker than Highland Sentinal, it's objectively worse. It's not like you'd go into some other situations and be like "you' know what this calls for? worse stats. I just want worse numbers."

This, specifically this kind of communication is where you lose me. It's just wrong. And I don't mean "subjectively wrong". I mean, what on earth are you talking about, 2 is less than 5.

My interpretation was ZOS has several options regarding consumables:

ZOS can spend resources to nerf consumables which will make the people using them upset but make things more balanced.

ZOS can spend resources to buff consumables to match the overpowered consumables which will make the people using them happier but will make things less balanced in an overall sense and annoy people that aren't fans of the existing consumables power level.

ZOS can do nothing and spend no resources doing so.

All of those options will lead to people being upset but, only two of the three cost resources.

With regards to sets, ESO has hundreds of them. If you are aiming for everything to be usable in a totally optimized build the odds are quite good you'll just end up with endless power creep as some of your attempts to balance things will miss the mark and make things more powerful than you intend and every time you try to bring the other items up to the best stuff you'll end up missing on some.

I would argue that for older sets you'd want to aim for sets to be at a point where to the eye of someone that isn't parsing the set looks like it might work out in situations that favored them that could reasonably occur.

To me, the issue would be less stuff like Mother's Sorrow vs Highland Sentinel where you could plausibly hit a situation where you move enough that Highland Sentinel's five piece is a downgrade vs Mother's Sorrow and more like Brands of Imperium, Vampire Lord, or Salvation where the sets do a thing that has a very narrow use case with the way other things in the game behave at the present time.

Brands of Imperium five piece hits the issue that with Scribing people can toss comparable or superior damage shields with a high frequency so getting one every 12 seconds when you take damage isn't all that special on it's own at this point.

Salvation's five piece hits the issue that it does nothing at all for players that are not WW's which can feel a bit bad as it's an Overland set. For people that are WW the set provides a rather minor buff for when you are in WW form so that the people that spend most of their time in WW form would likely rather run something else. As the transformation to WW just provides a Fear and comes at a relatively high Ultimate cost the set really isn't delivering that much effective power for a five piece.

The Vampire Lord set hits the same issue as Salvation when it comes to being an Overland set that has a five piece bonus that just applies to a tiny section of diseased players. At lower Vampire stages the set offers small enough benefits that other cost reduction sets are potentially more effective than running the Vampire set. For people at higher stages, the set does offer better cost reduction for Vampire abilities than other sets but, not by enough to necessarily justify the costs. Part of this is because the Vampire Ultimate is both ridiculously expensive and somewhat conflicting with the Vampire abilities. Your spammable for instance does damage based on the amount of HP you are missing but, since your Ultimate heals you to full health it's not going to be doing extra. Vampiric Drain isn't going to be healing you for much while it's active because it heals based on your missing health and the Ultimate heals you to full health. Since Ultimate gain is blocked during the Vampire ultimate Exhilarating Drain isn't going to be providing you with Ultimate. Even with subcalssing potentially bringing the Perfect Scion cost down to 106 it still is an awkward and ineffective build.

SilverBride wrote: »

As I stated above, I feel being able to turn difficulty on and off multiple times a day at will could lead to manipulating the system for advantage. This was the example I gave for what I could see happening:

"I can imagine a player seeing others fighting a world boss, so they crank up their difficulty and jump in to get the better rewards. Then they see another player gathering mats and they want to also gather mats, so they turn down their difficulty and start gathering mats faster. That is manipulating the system for advantages in my opinion and should be prevented."

This also negates the whole reason for wanting more difficulty in the first place, which was often stated as immersion and feeling the bosses were really a threat, and overland mobs weren't a threat, etc., so why turn it off?

@ZOS_GinaBruno Are there going to be any restrictions to how often players can change their difficulty, such as cooldowns, to prevent this type of action?

I don't understand why you seem to be ignoring the fact that when these players increase challenge, the challenge is increased. The game is harder for them to play. That is the consequence. It also happens to be something they want to do, but it is a consequence. They don't need to be burdened by further limitations.

And again, I fully intend to leave it on all the time, so I'm not debating this on my own behalf. It just feels incredibly silly to act like we need to have some additional dissuasion in play. It's just not necessary.

SilverBride wrote: »

It's not vindictive to not want players to have a free reign to change their difficulty choices multiple times a day to gain advantages. I suggested a token being required to change difficulty but a once a day cooldown would also help.

I can imagine a player seeing others fighting a world boss, so they crank up their difficulty and jump in to get the better rewards. Then they see another player gathering mats and they want to also gather mats, so they turn down their difficulty and start gathering mats faster. That is manipulating the system for advantages in my opinion and should be prevented.

If they treat the level difficult choice like they do the character delete process, perhaps it would be more balanced. Make the level difficulty account wide because wanting challenging content isn't just an end-game thing. Make the choice limited with a cooldown period of more than 24 hours. This would remove some of the opportunity for abuse.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Changing your difficulty settings based on the tasks you're doing is not abuse. That's pretty standard for any game. Punishing players financially for using a standard gameplay system would be a predatory tactic towards the customers. Someone SHOULD be able to turn down the difficulty if all they want to is complete their stacks of surveys.

If switch levels of difficult is the plan, then wanting more challenging content is not the desire. The desire is to gain a feeling of being more powerful. A player should NOT be able to switch difficulties at their leisure.

SilverBride wrote: »

I can imagine a player seeing others fighting a world boss, so they crank up their difficulty and jump in to get the better rewards. Then they see another player gathering mats and they want to also gather mats, so they turn down their difficulty and start gathering mats faster. That is manipulating the system for advantages in my opinion and should be prevented.

Hmm I think the rewards that are scaled by a difficulty setting will have to be tied directly to the experienced difficulty. In short, combat difficulty modifiers would only modify combat rewards.

But players should definitely have great freedom to customize which encounter to fight at what difficulty level. If such customization is not available (i.e. if characters have to commit to a fixed difficulty level applying to all encounters), a lot of players will be left out in the cold.

You can see already in this thread how some want the higher difficulty encounters to be made harder and NOT the mob fights and others want the exact opposite. How many 'fixable' levels would ZOS have to design and balance to make that work? Way too many.

shadoza wrote: »

disky wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not proposing that the easiest or most efficient path is the most correct one. Rich stated that "players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time." in his stream when asked about a veteran overland a long time ago. I've also read posts where players stated that they would use easy difficulty for gathering mats and some other activities.

I think players should have to choose a difficulty and stick with it, rather than having customized difficulties for different activities. And if they want to change their difficulty they should have to buy a token from the crown store to do so.

Who cares how people utilize this system if it doesn't affect you directly? Why does it matter if people choose to turn it on and off at a whim? No TES game has ever done difficulty options that way, and so it wouldn't be in line with the rest of the franchise, but more importantly I feel like that would completely turn off a huge number of players from even considering the feature, because if they can't go back without a cost, they're not going to risk enabling it in the first place. It would be a largely wasted effort on the part of the dev team. I and people like me would still do it, but it would cut out a lot of players who might be curious but on the fence due to the consequences.

Honestly I'm a little surprised you're acting so negatively, as when this was discussed by Matt in his letter and subsequently during their April(?) livestream, you seemed pretty relieved about it. As if you were glad that it would finally be dealt with, over and done.

I care and it does affect other players. Having elite-powered players rule the play field cost me a couple game friends because they stopped playing. Last day, the only one left from the group chose to play a different game. He is allowed truth enough; however, having ones play interfered with my someone that herd mobs, fast runs/picks resources in resource rich starter areas, one hit bosses in dungeons, spawn camps delves with a companion doing the killing and auto-loot doing the collecting, dominating all opportunities of enjoyment by base player in PvP mini-games . . . It affects other players.

The worst of it is, that those that choose the higher difficulty levels will demand higher, more powerful gear and pots which will eventually make the harder difficulty feel easy. Then the campaign for more challenging levels starts again. it is self-perpetuating by design. If there is a higher level of difficulty, there should not be higher level of rewards. The reward is in the challenge. If that is not reward enough, then your issues is not with more challenge but rather more power. my opinion.

No, skilled players will optimize but if they enable higher difficulty, the only effect you will see is that they will have a harder time slamming through whatever you're dealing with, which is a good thing for you. If there is stronger gear available then everyone has the ability to acquire it. For what it's worth, I have never done a trial and I almost never do PvP, and rarely group dungeons, so if I'm the one advocating for this feature then I'm not one of those people either. But I'm fine with them being there, because the situation would have been that way if increased difficulty wasn't an option anyway.

It's wild to me how, in the same post, some people can both lodge a complaint about players outgunning them and also argue against the solution.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

New Answer from the Reddit AMA

ZOS_Finn on Reddit wrote:

Short answer is: Yes, we are working on it.

Longer answer: We have scoping and are aligning resources for this initiative and will share more when we have better timelines.

For the time being, I can say that the some core values for this are...

\- This is optional and no one will be forced into it
\- There will be varied levels of difficulty players can opt into
\- We will NOT be separating players

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/s/8dqcougkjN

ZOS_GinaBruno on Reddit wrote:

Yes, it would include older content.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/s/4BKTqd1Hai

These responses personally make me feel like the timeline has been pushed back but I'm not sure.

@ZOS_Kevin

Is this still slated for the current content pass?

Was it ever slated for the current content pass? I do not remember seeing/hearing any mention of it. Would be great to see a quote if it exists.

Yes. I asked about it coming out this year, 2025, after the April livestream. My question was referencing a statement made at the end of 2024 that we'd know more in 2025. And I was reassured that the current plan was still that it would come out this content pass.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Thank you for the response. I guess my follow up question is if this is something still so early into prototyping, is this is something still planned to drop this year? I know last year, it was stated that it would be coming this year which lead to many of expecting news during the live. The new content cadence was stated to help with speed of releases so I wonder if this is still possibly coming this year?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As of right now, the goal is to still have this out during the content pass timeline. But if that changes, we will update once we have a clear picture if anything changes.

However, between the statements made in the AMA and the layoffs, I am not convinced that this is still the case. A lot has changed at ZOS and those statements make it sound like it's not that far in development.

@spartaxoxo Thanks a lot. I would be very surprised if we get this this year.

You're welcome. I'd be surprised too but I'd still like confirmation since we were told we'd be updated if things changed. Seems easy enough since the Livestream is this Thursday.

Just to level set, while overland difficulty is in active development, it's not something that will be ready to be released before the end of the year. We're definitely excited to share more information on it as development progresses, though!

So sad to hear exclusion is coming. Keep expanding difficulty levels and handing out higher rewards and you are perpetuated the problem.

We don't want to exclude anyone with this feature, and I'd like to reiterate the core values that Finn mentioned during the AMA:

• This will be optional and no one will be forced into it
• There will be varied levels of difficulty players can opt into
• We will NOT be separating players

If people on different difficulties are in the same instances, why even add this feature?

You can already remove your gear and/or skills to increase difficulty.

Fair question. Caveat of "this is still in development" but part of this feature will include proper incentives to opting into more difficult content, without making it feel like you are being punished for not doing it.

If some consideration for content congestion isn't in the works, I'd be very surprised if the solution is effective at all. It won't matter that difficulty is increased on a personal level if even a single high level player is nearby and opts out of it.

Signals so far have strongly suggested that players won't be separated. How will the solution account for opt-out players negating the system entirely for opt-in players?

Presently, the only workaround while self-handicapping is to adventure exclusively in low-traffic zones and content. Will that still be necessary after the solution is implemented?