800k people don't seem to mind difficult overworld

mickeyx

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

It's the same few players bringing it up time and again. A really small percentage even if we just go by regular forum posters

The same could be said for the other side of the argument. Not gonna get into that whole can of worms but lets just say that one side of the argument regularly gets out of hand to the point where this is the longest a thread about this has gone without getting locked in a very long time.

Here is a fact. If you were all really that important and in majority you would have got what you wanted by now. The writing is on the wall and only one side refuse to see it.

AlexanderDeLarge

spartaxoxo wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Numbers? Am I supposed to fire up some pie charts or something?

Yes. You are. [snip] Show us. What proof do you have that it's a lie that the vast majority of players enjoy the story content?

[snip] The only thing I've ever said on the subject is that Rich Lambert's anecdote from the twitch clip that's floating around is seven years old and incredibly out of date missing a lot of context and nuance that easily explains why those modes weren't too popular. I've also said that you can observe the overland experience being trivialized at CP300 to the point where the combat experience for the overwhelming majority of content couldn't possibly be enjoyable or fulfilling given how fast those mobs die.

The amount of people that would take time out of their day to complain about it on a forum that is a PITA to join? Small but if ZOS took a poll among 300+CP players in game and asked them if the game is too easy Y/N I'd bet good money that it'd be overwhelmingly yes.

[snip]
[edited for baiting & to remove quote]

AlexanderDeLarge

mickeyx wrote: »

Here is a fact. If you were all really that important and in majority you would have got what you wanted by now. The writing is on the wall and only one side refuse to see it.

There are a million and one things the game would improve the game that we don't have yet. This is a bad argument.

mickeyx

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

mickeyx wrote: »

Here is a fact. If you were all really that important and in majority you would have got what you wanted by now. The writing is on the wall and only one side refuse to see it.

There are a million and one things the game would improve the game that we don't have yet. This is a bad argument.

Is it? Since according to you this one of the most requested feature by the so called "majority" which keeps on coming up again and again on forums I thought it would be their priority number one.

spartaxoxo

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

You're creating a strawman argument that I'm not even arguing.

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

[snip] We've been gaslit for the last five years being told that only a vocal minority wants this

[snip]

So again, where is your proof that the devs are wrong about their engagement metrics?

seriously after we've been told we're a fringe minority and that our opinions shouldn't influence the game, that we should stay in instanced content and shut up, take what we're given by ZOS or stop playing the game because the game has moved past us for five years?

That's the strawman.

What was said to you was "since you're in the minority, why not come with a compromise solution?"

Saying that Vet Overland isn't happening isn't trolling you. It's the official stance of Zenimax.

[edited to remove quote & for baiting]

AlexanderDeLarge

mickeyx wrote: »

Is it? Since according to you this one of the most requested feature by the so called "majority" which keeps on coming up again and again on forums I thought it would be their priority number one.

People have been requesting spears and spellcrafting for even longer and we still don't have those.

Didn't claim to be a majority. I even said that in my most recent post. The majority of accounts likely played the game for a couple hours minutes and quit long before reaching CPanything.

The amount of people that would take time out of their day to complain about it on a forum that is a PITA to join? Small but if ZOS took a poll among 300+CP players in game and asked them if the game is too easy Y/N I'd bet good money that it'd be overwhelmingly yes.

Iccotak

Before this escalates:

Trolling or Baiting:
The act of trolling is defined as something that is created for the intent to provoke conflict, shock others, or to elicit a strong negative or emotional reaction. It’s okay and very normal to disagree with others, and even to debate, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community. If you do not have something constructive or meaningful to add to a discussion, we strongly recommend you refrain from posting in that thread, and find another discussion to participate in instead. It is also not constructive or helpful to publicly call out others and accuse them of trolling, or call them a troll—please refrain from doing so. If you genuinely believe someone is trolling, please report the post or thread to the ESO Team, and leave it at that.

spartaxoxo

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the current official stance of Zenimax.

Amottica

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the objective facts as stated to us by Zenimax

I would like to add that one person suggested people did not reach V16 because it was such a grind. I hear from my guildmates that is not the case and v16 did not come until much later. Also that the vet zones started at V1.

Also, that Rich specifically spoke to players that finished their home alliance were not continuing on to the more challenging content which very much puts those vet zones into context and I am confident a great many player manged to reach level 50 to be V1.

This also brings back that to have a chance to convince Zenimax that we need to actually demonstrate that the casual players have shrunk in numbers and more serious players make up a sizable portion of the player base. Not sure how that would be done since the game has been very successful since Zenimax adopted the current design.

Darrett

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the objective facts as stated to us by Zenimax

I would like to add that one person suggested people did not reach V16 because it was such a grind. I hear from my guildmates that is not the case and v16 did not come until much later. Also that the vet zones started at V1.

Also, that Rich specifically spoke to players that finished their home alliance were not continuing on to the more challenging content which very much puts those vet zones into context and I am confident a great many player manged to reach level 50 to be V1.

This also brings back that to have a chance to convince Zenimax that we need to actually demonstrate that the casual players have shrunk in numbers and more serious players make up a sizable portion of the player base. Not sure how that would be done since the game has been very successful since Zenimax adopted the current design.

Originally VR10 was the cap. It increased bit by bit through updates to VR16.

The grind was really rough, and it wasn’t fun to slowly kill a kagouti to find a farmer’s lost sheep. A very sizable portion of the player base hit a wall in the early VRs.

trackdemon5512

Darrett wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the objective facts as stated to us by Zenimax

I would like to add that one person suggested people did not reach V16 because it was such a grind. I hear from my guildmates that is not the case and v16 did not come until much later. Also that the vet zones started at V1.

Also, that Rich specifically spoke to players that finished their home alliance were not continuing on to the more challenging content which very much puts those vet zones into context and I am confident a great many player manged to reach level 50 to be V1.

This also brings back that to have a chance to convince Zenimax that we need to actually demonstrate that the casual players have shrunk in numbers and more serious players make up a sizable portion of the player base. Not sure how that would be done since the game has been very successful since Zenimax adopted the current design.

Originally VR10 was the cap. It increased bit by bit through updates to VR16.

The grind was really rough, and it wasn’t fun to slowly kill a kagouti to find a farmer’s lost sheep. A very sizable portion of the player base hit a wall in the early VRs.

A huge portion of the player base is probably still under CP500 and that probably really factors into why making “harder content” is a non-starter.

The entire reason CP increases were halted with Murkmire was due to this. Too many players not getting to the higher levels and the max CP players excluding the lowers from play. That kind of nonsense continues today with people asking players to have 70k DPS for Craglorn trials.

Tiered content, whether veteran or overland, splits players. Those who are arguing that sliders and/or instanced zones would have no issue clearly have forgotten how they’ve treated other players over the years when it comes to vet content. Heck ya’ll kick CP300s from Vet Dungeons nowadays because you want to get things done fast.

If you want a challenge, you have to create your own for the most part. Because history has shown that no matter what the hardcore get segregationist when it comes to vet.

FluffWit

I was around for vet ranks, it was one helluva a grind. On top of that the cost of mats to craft VR16 was pretty insane- at first you could only buy them for Tel Var, then you could either buy them for Tel Var or harvest nodes in Wrothgar for them.

Personally I hit VR14 and just decided not to bother trying to get further.

Plus you had to grind those vet ranks in every character. It was pretty nuts.

If you weren't around pre One Tamriel I don't think you can really appreciate how bad the game was back then.

Callosum

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the current official stance of Zenimax.

thanks for this one. Considering "on what players want to do" this is for me where something goes wrong. They are just adding a couple of dungeons and then there should be activities for the high skilled players. While I like dungeons I don't really care about having 4 new ones every year. I still like exploration, stories and lore the gameplay part has just become to easy. There's already to many gear sets in my opinion and often I can't find players who want's to take it slow at listen to the story in the new dungeons. I'm not sure if i'm wrong but it doesn't seem to me that people are super existed when these new dungeons comes out and adding one or two less would free up a lot of recourses. Why not use some of the recourses on adding some Vet overland content that give skilled players a reason to go there and those who's progressing a reason to return later on. I'm not saying that I have the perfect answer but here's some suggestions:

- Vet overland bosses. And with incentive to do them (transmutes, gold, small chances of mythics from the zone. Just examples)
- A couple of vet quests like Shada's Tear from craglon
- A Vet puplic dungeon

kargen27

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

It's the same few players bringing it up time and again. A really small percentage even if we just go by regular forum posters

The same could be said for the other side of the argument. Not gonna get into that whole can of worms but lets just say that one side of the argument regularly gets out of hand to the point where this is the longest a thread about this has gone without getting locked in a very long time.

yeah I admitted that. In this thread we have basically about five that really want it and about five that are set against a vet overland instance.

Alpharos7

I am pretty sure we have this debate at least once a week.

Overland difficulty does not need increasing, as it should be accessible for all users. I remember the old days of cadwell's silver / gold and it was a nightmare. Besides there is loads of content for experienced players - bosses, group dungeons, trials, craglorn etc.

However, one thing I would like to see updated is basic zone dungeons. These offer no challenge at all (even the bosses) and I personally feel they should be made harder. Also, I think the vast majority of dungeons in starter zones (if not all) are optional aside from achievements/ skill points, so there is no reason not to increase their difficulty.

Lady_Galadhiel

Iccotak wrote: »

Before this escalates:

Trolling or Baiting:
The act of trolling is defined as something that is created for the intent to provoke conflict, shock others, or to elicit a strong negative or emotional reaction. It’s okay and very normal to disagree with others, and even to debate, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community. If you do not have something constructive or meaningful to add to a discussion, we strongly recommend you refrain from posting in that thread, and find another discussion to participate in instead. It is also not constructive or helpful to publicly call out others and accuse them of trolling, or call them a troll—please refrain from doing so. If you genuinely believe someone is trolling, please report the post or thread to the ESO Team, and leave it at that.

Too late,this did escalate already like 25 pages ago

CP5

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes. It is so.

If you have 4 normal instances and then 1 vet instance. Then let's say zos wants more people interacting. They can combine the 4 normals into 1 normal instance. But they cannot change the vet instance into a normal instance. They can no longer have 1 instance if that's what is needed. They must always have at least 2.

The more parts you separate a group into, the greater the division. Simple as that.

You're better off arguing that the divison doesn't matter like cp5 than denying it would exist at all. That's obviously false.

That's not how it works. 4 normal instances wouldn't just merge into 1, the point of having different instances is to prevent a single zone from surpassing a particular population cap. Any decently populated zone has multiple instances running at once, shuffling around who is in which instance so that a few of them are tailored to a different difficulty wouldn't break the servers, or dissolve the player count. You already don't even see a fraction of people in Rawl'kha or Wayrest, and the most 'intense' this system could become is if a dead zone dared to have 2 instances running, which is likely nothing compared to the more popular zones.

If 100 players were in one zone, but the server could only keep 20 people in a zone, it probably would divide them into say, 10 groups of 10, that way if someone wanted to join their friend in a particular instance there would be room. You aren't making 1 normal instance with 9-10x the population because of performance issues, so if 1 of those 10 instances was made into a vet instance, anywhere between 1-10 people would be in it, beyond that the server could split it again, making 2 instances for 14 players, splitting them 7/7. And all the other instances? Would remain around 10 players, if not more, just balancing out the remaining population between the number of instances needed. If you really demand I write out example numbers then I may, it's just amusing how the people against a vet overland are grabbing at very obscure reasons and then pushing them to their limits.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Maya_Nur wrote: »

Discussion results so far...

let me fix this:

Players who want vet overland: We want vet overland.
Players who don't want vet overland: We do not want vet overland.

Players who want vet overland: Then we want a toggle to vet overland.
For all No, it will split the community.

Players who want vet overland: Community has already been splitted so the toggle won't change anything.
For all No, it will take extra resources from devs to rehash every game zone.

Players who want vet overland: Then at least we want more smart and tough enemies, not everywhere but a bunch of them.
a few more world bosses would not hurt.

its a mmorpg, we share a world and like it or not the majority does not want to have to plow through tough sheep and bugs to get to a destination (we can alt for that)

Hallothiel

Maya_Nur wrote: »

Discussion results so far...

Players who want vet overland: We want vet overland.
Players who don't want vet overland: No, most of the playerbase are casuals.

Players who want vet overland: Then we want a toggle to vet overland.
Players who don't want vet overland: No, it will split the community.

Players who want vet overland: Community has already been splitted so the toggle won't change anything.
Players who don't want vet overland: No, it will take extra resources from devs to rehash every game zone.

Players who want vet overland: Then at least we want more smart and tough enemies, not everywhere but a bunch of them.
Players who don't want vet overland: No. Just no. Never. Forget about it. You are minority. Nooooooo!

Wow. Way to belittle people who don’t agree with you. [snip]

[edited for baiting]

zaria

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”

Now I did not find Cadwell's Silver and Gold very hard then I did it back at launch, now it might have been nerfed a bit before I reached it as I took my time doing the zones but don't think I used much over an month reaching silver and believe it was complains silver and gold was to hard by people going there fast.
And I was an pretty weak player back then who found public dungeons to hard to solo at my level.

But yes at least gold was pretty empty, yes this might have to do with instancing, say standard, silver and gold had the same number of instances of zones.

Now it has been a bit increase in difficulty on delve and public dungeon bosses the last chapters.
The public dungeons bosses now feel more like an easy normal group dungeon around 4-600 K health and a bit over an millon on the challenge boss.

Parasaurolophus

I would like to compare this problem with the problem of not having a storymod in dungeons. On a recent stream, Rich also made it clear that dungeons should remain a group experience. And then he also laughed that yes, we are now really discussing the solo option in group content. However, people constantly come to the forum who complain about rushers. This problem is real. The problem that became one of the reasons for the death of Craglorn continues to exist in the dungeons. You can write as much as you like about l2p here and be able to complete this solo later. Or find like-minded people. But we all know perfectly well that it just doesn't work. Group and raid quests do not work. There are several reasons why this is a very bad idea. It doesn't work the way it was originally intended. And no explanation helps. But ZoS continues to invest in it, developing dungeons and trials with lots of dialogue, voice acting, and scattered notes. ZoS could change the way you create dungeon quests. For example, leave only the initial dialogue and the final one. And many speeches of quest NPCs inside the dungeon without dialogue. But no.

Also, when the perfect weapons from the arenas appeared in the game, many players were very outraged, because they were literally forced to return to content in which they had burned out long ago. When the players said (whether on Reddit, or in discord, I don't remember, they often saw a screen on the forum) that they don't like farming endlessly, Rich said a game about farming ... dungeons and arenas is a big pain that tormented players for a long time. I don't blame anyone. No one will criticize their own product. And Rich is a great guy and does a lot of work. It's just that sometimes things happen that require dialogue with the community or a detailed briefing.

Another rather strange comment about the division of the community, that the zone cannot merge into one if there are not enough players. All overland content except wb and anchors is a solo experience. The earliest criticism of the game stated that this game does not encourage players to merge with each other at all. The players are more likely to interfere with each other. And that hasn't really changed. They often talk about wb, but the game is not focused on wb. Right now, a player in one of my guilds was asking for help chatting with harrowstorm. And I often see players asking for help with bosses in the chat. And all this happens without splitting the player base. This simply happens because the overland is completely unattractive in terms of gameplay and rewards. Why should I help someone kill the boss when I can find the exact same reward in the chest behind the nearest stone? Can you give bosses an extra exp for a kill, at least? Or an experience buff. Perhaps a better chance of getting some new collectible? At least something? ZoS knows very well how quickly their overland content burns out. That is why they delay the release of motives and obsolete endless events in order to create a population in the dead zones. But this is just an illusion.

spartaxoxo

CP5 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes. It is so.

If you have 4 normal instances and then 1 vet instance. Then let's say zos wants more people interacting. They can combine the 4 normals into 1 normal instance. But they cannot change the vet instance into a normal instance. They can no longer have 1 instance if that's what is needed. They must always have at least 2.

The more parts you separate a group into, the greater the division. Simple as that.

You're better off arguing that the divison doesn't matter like cp5 than denying it would exist at all. That's obviously false.

That's not how it works. 4 normal instances wouldn't just merge into 1, the point of having different instances is to prevent a single zone from surpassing a particular population cap.

That's exactly how it works. Those instances are used to prevent Overflow at peak and then closed when they are not needed. This is to keep the playerbase unified and interacting.

But they cannot do that for ones with different difficulty settings.

CP5

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes. It is so.

If you have 4 normal instances and then 1 vet instance. Then let's say zos wants more people interacting. They can combine the 4 normals into 1 normal instance. But they cannot change the vet instance into a normal instance. They can no longer have 1 instance if that's what is needed. They must always have at least 2.

The more parts you separate a group into, the greater the division. Simple as that.

You're better off arguing that the divison doesn't matter like cp5 than denying it would exist at all. That's obviously false.

That's not how it works. 4 normal instances wouldn't just merge into 1, the point of having different instances is to prevent a single zone from surpassing a particular population cap.

That's exactly how it works. Those instances are used to prevent Overflow at peak and then closed when they are not needed. This is to keep the playerbase unified and interacting.

But they cannot do that for ones with different difficulty settings.

So rather than a minimum of 1 zone, it will be 2 instead. Whenever things are that slow, the change in population is almost nonexistent, since the number of people in the zone is just as low.

Elsonso

CP5 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Yes. It is so.

If you have 4 normal instances and then 1 vet instance. Then let's say zos wants more people interacting. They can combine the 4 normals into 1 normal instance. But they cannot change the vet instance into a normal instance. They can no longer have 1 instance if that's what is needed. They must always have at least 2.

The more parts you separate a group into, the greater the division. Simple as that.

You're better off arguing that the divison doesn't matter like cp5 than denying it would exist at all. That's obviously false.

That's not how it works. 4 normal instances wouldn't just merge into 1, the point of having different instances is to prevent a single zone from surpassing a particular population cap.

We call them zone "instances" in the forum, but they have said that they are not instances. Dungeons are instances. In the past, they have referred to them as "channels", but think of them as a layer, not an instance. Players can move between layers, so if there were 4 normal layers, they could merge them into 1 layer. I don't know if they ever use this technology, but I have seen it work prior to launch.

From a game design perspective not specific to ESO, I would not expect them to merge a normal and veteran layer, as the two are incompatible. More specific to ESO, those would likely not be layers, anyway. My expectation is that there would be a Normal Zone and a Veteran Zone. Players would be in completely separate zones, similar to how Stonefalls is separate from Deshaan.

Amottica wrote: »

This also brings back that to have a chance to convince Zenimax that we need to actually demonstrate that the casual players have shrunk in numbers and more serious players make up a sizable portion of the player base. Not sure how that would be done since the game has been very successful since Zenimax adopted the current design.

The problem with this line of thinking is that we (the forum) have no facts to back up that assertion. ZOS, on the other hand, has spreadsheets filled with data that can counter it, if the forum is wrong. (Edit: and they will never share those spreadsheets with the forum)

colossalvoids wrote: »

Then you should re-read (but not really, there's a almost 30 pages already) a bunch of replies with same proposals as a middle ground that were stomped upon with semi-relied to the topic quotes or assumptions about how things are working.

One thing to keep in mind is that this thread is a solutioning thread. We are debating the finer points of overworld difficulty as it pertains to ESO, and that is now entirely for entertainment purposes. ZOS is interested in the problem, and that was stated on the first page. When we switch to solutioning, that is less useful to ZOS.

trackdemon5512

Let’s say that you had a Vet Overland, created by making a second permanent instance of every zone (why would one would need a vet overland of the starter zones idk but to each their own). What problems would you face?

1) Population - how do you address it? If there are too many people in a vet zone chilling, like say the way they just idle around and PvP battle in capitals, do you then make multiple instances of a vet zone for no reason? Many zones are instanced like such not because of questing but just players hanging about and trading, showing off, battling each other, crafting.

It would seem to me the only times instancing is needed for questing and PVE battling is during an event. Outside of that players are naturally in an area just to chill. How many instances of Deshaan are because of questing and how many are due to the fact that it’s just a major quest/craft hub? How many instances of the Alikr are around because of questing and how many just because players are cheesing dolmens for XP?

To me it seems a waste of server resources to split and further instance a zone for PVE combat if no one is engaging in PVE combat. And let’s be honest, players are lazy and will not switch to normal and back for questing. They want it to seamlessly flow.

2) Communication - well does zone and voice chat now carry over the two difficulties? Can someone in the vet instance request help from the normal instance and vice-versa? Will someone in a vet instance spam chat with items to sell and no one to buy? Will someone in one instance post offensive things in text chat all the time and when asked to stop, knowing ZOS won’t do anything, just tell them “If you don’t like it you can go to the normal instance”?

3. Farming Would creating separate permanent instances break the economy via farming? If no one is in a vet instance you can easily argue that it’s easier to farm for mat nodes and treasure chests there instead of the normal one. And don’t try and use an argument that the harder mobs make such a thing more difficult. There are TONS of farming builds that specialize in minimizing enemy engagement via pets (bot farmers) or by taking paths that evade such.

How many of y’all have done chest runs and knowing where the chests spawn completely ignore enemies for the goods? Let’s also be honest that item set color drop matters in no way outside of jewelry for vet players. Asking for purple or such to only drop in said instances as a reward for going is giving those players control of purple mats in the market. All they will decon is purple gear. It’s exactly what happens when those players farm vet dungeons. They decon purple gear that’s unneeded and reap the rewards. It’ll be even easier to do on a vet overland with no one there.

These are just 3 issues that pop up. I’m sure there are dozens more and the developers know them which is why Vet Overland can never be a thing.

Amottica

Darrett wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

At this point I want to reiterate what was said by Rich.

On Vet Overland:

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.” 

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

---

When we argue that the vast majority of players are happy with Overland, when we say a separate instance isn't gonna happen because they look at what happened with Craglorn and don't want to repeat that, when we say that they won't split the playerbase and that how much work it will take has to be taken into account....those statements are NOT trolling, gaslighting, etc. They are the objective facts as stated to us by Zenimax

I would like to add that one person suggested people did not reach V16 because it was such a grind. I hear from my guildmates that is not the case and v16 did not come until much later. Also that the vet zones started at V1.

Also, that Rich specifically spoke to players that finished their home alliance were not continuing on to the more challenging content which very much puts those vet zones into context and I am confident a great many player manged to reach level 50 to be V1.

This also brings back that to have a chance to convince Zenimax that we need to actually demonstrate that the casual players have shrunk in numbers and more serious players make up a sizable portion of the player base. Not sure how that would be done since the game has been very successful since Zenimax adopted the current design.

Originally VR10 was the cap. It increased bit by bit through updates to VR16.

The grind was really rough, and it wasn’t fun to slowly kill a kagouti to find a farmer’s lost sheep. A very sizable portion of the player base hit a wall in the early VRs.

@Darrett Thank you for your reply.

I am aware that Zenimax raised the level cap from where it originally started. However, the level cap is irrelevant since the vet areas started at VR1, not VR10 or VR16. I said as much in my post you quoted.

Even then, if someone could not deal with leveling a character to level 50/VR1 then it seems clear ESO was not the game for them. Heck, Rich specifically spoke about those who did manage to finish their home alliance but did not move on to silver and gold but seemed to continue playing. I also mentioned that in the post you quoted. So this is comparing apples to apples.

trackdemon5512

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Let’s say that you had a Vet Overland, created by making a second permanent instance of every zone (why would one would need a vet overland of the starter zones idk but to each their own). What problems would you face?

1) Population - how do you address it? If there are too many people in a vet zone chilling, like say the way they just idle around and PvP battle in capitals, do you then make multiple instances of a vet zone for no reason? Many zones are instanced like such not because of questing but just players hanging about and trading, showing off, battling each other, crafting.

It would seem to me the only times instancing is needed for questing and PVE battling is during an event. Outside of that players are naturally in an area just to chill. How many instances of Deshaan are because of questing and how many are due to the fact that it’s just a major quest/craft hub? How many instances of the Alikr are around because of questing and how many just because players are cheesing dolmens for XP?

To me it seems a waste of server resources to split and further instance a zone for PVE combat if no one is engaging in PVE combat. And let’s be honest, players are lazy and will not switch to normal and back for questing. They want it to seamlessly flow.

2) Communication - well does zone and voice chat now carry over the two difficulties? Can someone in the vet instance request help from the normal instance and vice-versa? Will someone in a vet instance spam chat with items to sell and no one to buy? Will someone in one instance post offensive things in text chat all the time and when asked to stop, knowing ZOS won’t do anything, just tell them “If you don’t like it you can go to the normal instance”?

3. Farming Would creating separate permanent instances break the economy via farming? If no one is in a vet instance you can easily argue that it’s easier to farm for mat nodes and treasure chests there instead of the normal one. And don’t try and use an argument that the harder mobs make such a thing more difficult. There are TONS of farming builds that specialize in minimizing enemy engagement via pets (bot farmers) or by taking paths that evade such.

How many of y’all have done chest runs and knowing where the chests spawn completely ignore enemies for the goods? Let’s also be honest that item set color drop matters in no way outside of jewelry for vet players. Asking for purple or such to only drop in said instances as a reward for going is giving those players control of purple mats in the market. All they will decon is purple gear. It’s exactly what happens when those players farm vet dungeons. They decon purple gear that’s unneeded and reap the rewards. It’ll be even easier to do on a vet overland with no one there.

These are just 3 issues that pop up. I’m sure there are dozens more and the developers know them which is why Vet Overland can never be a thing.

Continuing my musing from above, here is a big one from a developer standpoint:

4. ACCESS - How do you decide who has access to a Vet Overland and how do they access it?

Is it like Cyrodiil where under 50s can enter or will you institute a CP requirement? Would a CP requirement even be necessary as it's not like you're entering content that is as difficult as a dungeon or trial. Would grouping with other players negate level requirements the way that walking into a dungeons with friends outside of a group finder does? And do you need to use the Group Finder system to switch instances the way Cyrodiil and Imperial City do?

Parasaurolophus

1) Population - how do you address it? If there are too many people in a vet zone chilling, like say the way they just idle around and PvP battle in capitals, do you then make multiple instances of a vet zone for no reason? Many zones are instanced like such not because of questing but just players hanging about and trading, showing off, battling each other, crafting.

It would seem to me the only times instancing is needed for questing and PVE battling is during an event. Outside of that players are naturally in an area just to chill. How many instances of Deshaan are because of questing and how many are due to the fact that it’s just a major quest/craft hub? How many instances of the Alikr are around because of questing and how many just because players are cheesing dolmens for XP?

To me it seems a waste of server resources to split and further instance a zone for PVE combat if no one is engaging in PVE combat. And let’s be honest, players are lazy and will not switch to normal and back for questing. They want it to seamlessly flow.

The problem is that overland is a big empty social hub with no activity. There will be content, people will play. And what difference does it make if people use 4 normal mirrors or 2 normal and 2 veteran mirrors? In the end, only the last released locations are filled. The rest are mostly dead.

2) Communication - well does zone and voice chat now carry over the two difficulties? Can someone in the vet instance request help from the normal instance and vice-versa? Will someone in a vet instance spam chat with items to sell and no one to buy? Will someone in one instance post offensive things in text chat all the time and when asked to stop, knowing ZOS won’t do anything, just tell them “If you don’t like it you can go to the normal instance”?

Locations are already divided into mirrors! And yes, it greatly interferes with communication, group formation and trade. Sometimes, even when it seems that there are not many people at the location. With my raid I often find myself in different mirrors on Vvardenfell when we restart vCR + 3 at night. It seems that one mirror can hold no more than 50 or 70 people. Of course I want to know the exact number.

3. Farming Would creating separate permanent instances break the economy via farming? If no one is in a vet instance you can easily argue that it’s easier to farm for mat nodes and treasure chests there instead of the normal one. And don’t try and use an argument that the harder mobs make such a thing more difficult. There are TONS of farming builds that specialize in minimizing enemy engagement via pets (bot farmers) or by taking paths that evade such.

Farming is not on such a catastrophic scale. The economy in this game does not play a big role and does not provide significant advantages. I speak as a person who holds more than 150 million gold and just does not know what they can be effectively spent on. Have you seen the prices of chrome?

mocap

29 pages of vet instances for overland? For real? xd

ZOS, just make craftable set with bonuses like:
(2 items) enemies inflict 50% more damage
(3 items) player deal 50% less damage
(4 items) increase damage bonuses to 75%
(5 items) increase damage bonuses to 100%

Overland enemies will start hit player with this set pretty much like vMA mobs. Vet players happy, new players happy (PC-EU server perfomance happy!). No more vet overland threads.

Elsonso

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Locations are already divided into mirrors! And yes, it greatly interferes with communication, group formation and trade. Sometimes, even when it seems that there are not many people at the location. With my raid I often find myself in different mirrors on Vvardenfell when we restart vCR + 3 at night. It seems that one mirror can hold no more than 50 or 70 people. Of course I want to know the exact number.

Lots of people would like to know that number. We don't know whether this number changes, how often it may change, or if it is even the same for every zone. Best guess, so far, is that each channel/layer (what you call "mirror") holds hundreds of people, not dozens.

The thing about how ESO divides players now is that it is entirely based on the demands being placed on the server. This means that the server has the flexibility to move players between layers upon request, and we can do that with the Travel To Player feature. This resolves most, if not all, grouping problems. It does not resolve limitations with zone chat, as there is no way to be in a zone and zone chat with everyone in the zone, which could be thousands of people. At the start of the Blackwood event, there could have been tens of thousands of people, or even more than a hundred thousand, in the Blackwood zone concurrently. Zone chat at that scale would be useless. It would move too fast.

That is another number I would like to know, by the way. Max concurrent players in a single zone.

This sort of division is much different from what is being suggested as a byproduct of veteran zones. In the veteran zone scenario, there is no way for two players to sync up unless both players can access the zone. Now, this might seem like something that isn't a problem, as people might assume that it will always be two or more veteran players, but this game also has non-veteran players. Today, those two would be able to group up in overland. With veteran zones, they should not be able to.