800k people don't seem to mind difficult overworld

Parasaurolophus

Hallothiel wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The reason it's mentioned in these threads is to show how many players did not like the veteran overland zones and how little they were played. But no one outside these forums is speaking of it that I've seen.

They didn't like stupid mobs with senseless health and damage buffs. Making enemies not worthless in a fight isn't the same as padding those enemies who do nothing but run from fights or blow bubbles. Does that make sense?

That wasn't it at all. They didn't like difficult things in the story.

Some people don't like difficulty in their stories, other people, as clearly shown in this thread, aren't like you. Some people like it when an end of the world threat is able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Do you not understand that other people can seek enjoyment from things you don't personally enjoy?

And vice versa. But it all comes down to what the majority wants and what is feasible.

The majority don't use companions, yet they exist. Not every thing added to the game needs to be for everyone.

Don’t know what you play on, but companions are everywhere on PS4.

I also often used compnion during the event, for example. Or when I was farming parts in public dungeons. But only in order to have a chance to get an expensive gear and sell it for 500+ k

spartaxoxo

Hallothiel wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

The reason it's mentioned in these threads is to show how many players did not like the veteran overland zones and how little they were played. But no one outside these forums is speaking of it that I've seen.

They didn't like stupid mobs with senseless health and damage buffs. Making enemies not worthless in a fight isn't the same as padding those enemies who do nothing but run from fights or blow bubbles. Does that make sense?

That wasn't it at all. They didn't like difficult things in the story.

Some people don't like difficulty in their stories, other people, as clearly shown in this thread, aren't like you. Some people like it when an end of the world threat is able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Do you not understand that other people can seek enjoyment from things you don't personally enjoy?

And vice versa. But it all comes down to what the majority wants and what is feasible.

The majority don't use companions, yet they exist. Not every thing added to the game needs to be for everyone.

Don’t know what you play on, but companions are everywhere on PS4.

Yeah. I am on ps4 and they are all over overland, and have been since they launched.

spartaxoxo

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No that's not true. The zone simply demanded a higher level each time. But at your level, the mobs were always pretty easy.

It is true. The mobs were at a different level than you and that made them harder. So a lot of people didn't bother.

You have no idea how much more difficult it is. The mobs at the other end of the location were invincible. This literally prevented us from exploring the location. The very design of the questing put us on the rails from which we could not get off. Progress affected us too much. But that's not the point. I say that the zones of silver and gold were fundamentally no different from the locations of your alliance.

But it made it harder. And there was plenty of feedback then of people enjoying or not enjoying the increased challenge they represented. But in the end, as stated by ZOS most didn't like it and didn't bother. The mechs may not have different but that's not the only way to have increased difficulty.

I expected you to say so. But you are wrong. We did not like that they literally limit even within one location, making traveling to another location or to the other end of the current location not only difficult, but impossible. You just seem to have a bad idea of what this game was really like before OT. We just had a hugely increasing modifier for mobs. And as many wrote here, this is not at all what players who ask for a wet overland want.
But again ... We talked about whether the silver and gold were more difficult than the locations of your alliance. I just said that Rich's statement was very strange. After all, he also said that most people were completing the questline of their alliance.

So people weren't saying things like this after things changed?



or this (both images same person)




or here is someone who actually enjoyed the challenge and was sad to see it go. They had the same complaint that you do now.



I don't think I have a poor understanding of what happened there at all. It used to be harder and the devs changed things.

I completed all alliances without any difficulty. I played without sets, without knowledge of mechanics, even without healing skills. I tried to heal only with potions. I just have no idea what difficulties could be? Maybe the person did not have the appropriate rank?

The increased difficulty came from the mobs hitting harder because they were higher level. Perhaps the challenge increase wasn't enough to make them feel different to you, or perhaps you're misremembering what things were like for you, I don't know. I just know I can see clearly the devs saying they nerfed it and go back to posts from that era discussing the difficulty and find people liking it or disliking it. And also praising or having scorn for the nerfs. And that tells me factually that the stat increases did, in fact, result in an increased challenge for many people. You're simply incorrect. Silver and Gold did get easier.

spartaxoxo

CP5 wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

I just said that Rich's statement was very strange. After all, he also said that most people were completing the questline of their alliance.

Rich was responding to someone who said the reason no one did Silver and Gold was because they had to go through their own alliance first. He said that wasn't actually true and that a ton of people completed their own alliance storylines to get to Silver and Gold but they just did not like extra difficulty in the story.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s 1:48:00 through 1:51:11

There were no additional difficulties. I will repeat once again that the zones of silver and gold were no different from the zones of their alliance.

Not only were the mobs different level ranges, but each instance type restricted who could enter based on faction. Not hard to imagine them being able to tweak other things between instances, like they do everywhere else.

Kamatsu wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

The majority don't use companions, yet they exist. Not every thing added to the game needs to be for everyone.

I see you keep saying this - but can you prove it? Do you have access to internal game metrics which show how many active players are using companions and how many are not?

Answer: No you don't. You can only judge by what you see when you're playing, if you're even looking.

My rebuttal to you: In the past week I've been to many different places throughout the game. The vast majority of ppl I see playing have a companion out and active while they are questing, doing dolmens, etc.

Who's correct? Neither of us have access to actual game metrics, but the viewpoint of companion use is absolutely opposite of each other.

---

As to the premise of this thread: What it really boils down to is this is a business, and any business is going to try and maximize it's profit by catering to the majority, while throwing bones to the minority. This is exactly what we see in ESO - Overland & quest's are easy, while you do have more difficult content in HM dungeons, overland boss/group fights, etc.

Another thing to consider is every business has a limited budget to do things - so eSO only has a set budget of money & man-hours they can dedicate to something. If they were to dedicate time into making a vet overland toggle/instance/server... where would they get the man-hours from, and who would lose out?

- Vet Dungeons? The community that loves these already complains the few dungeons they get a year isn't enough I believe. They will be peeved if they suddenly find that for a year they'll get either only 1 or no new dungeons

- PvP? The PvP community is already in decline due to years of now effort and manpower spent on it, with a myriad of issues and problems. Having what few ppl are working on it taken off it... would kill the Cyrodil scene, and hugely negatively effect the BG scene

- Crafting / housing / etc? People like looking forward to new houses, new systems in place. ZOS has shown a willingness to try different things. How would everyone feel if suddenly that wasn't going to happen for a year due to Vet Overland?

- Questing? Take a look at how negative ppl are to the current questing. Questing quality has deteriorated, and if it gets shortchanged any further... ZOS might find the majority of the playerbase starting to leave & not come back if what they come for gets even worse.

So I ask you again: What aspect of the game & the associated players would you like to cripple for the 6-12? months it would take to implement what you're after? What aspects of the game would you not care if it didn't change, get improved or added on in a 6-12 month period? What part of the player base do you want to annoy/turn-away to get what you want?

First, your points about things being skipped. Did companion development cause ZOS to cut the dungeons from this years rotation? Did the CP overhaul? Did the item set collection stop them from adding more sets? This is a utility slot in their content rotation, dungeons are a part of it, zones, with all their questing and home furnishings are a part of that. None of the additional features, not the necromancer, jewelry crafting, or the like, have gotten in the way of that.

ZOS adds additional things like this to content all the time, between new classes, the CP overhaul, they set aside time outside those pain points you're so worried about them skipping to add new things, not just the bare minimum. Ignore that if you like, but just like the CP overhaul, or the old zone delve update ZOS did years ago, they can do this over time if need be, but them putting effort into this openly would only serve to provoke those in this thread who are aggressively against the idea.

The CP overhaul took like two years. It was a ton of work but worth it because people used it. Just the performance fixes resulted in a sparser Blackwood. If they were to go back and tweak old mobs to change the mechanics: we'd likely get no new systems, arenas, classes, or whatever bonus it is they have planned.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

_adhyffbjjjf12 wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Kamatsu wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

The majority don't use companions, yet they exist. Not every thing added to the game needs to be for everyone.

I see you keep saying this - but can you prove it? Do you have access to internal game metrics which show how many active players are using companions and how many are not?

Answer: No you don't. You can only judge by what you see when you're playing, if you're even looking.

My rebuttal to you: In the past week I've been to many different places throughout the game. The vast majority of ppl I see playing have a companion out and active while they are questing, doing dolmens, etc.

Who's correct? Neither of us have access to actual game metrics, but the viewpoint of companion use is absolutely opposite of each other.

---

As to the premise of this thread: What it really boils down to is this is a business, and any business is going to try and maximize it's profit by catering to the majority, while throwing bones to the minority. This is exactly what we see in ESO - Overland & quest's are easy, while you do have more difficult content in HM dungeons, overland boss/group fights, etc.

Another thing to consider is every business has a limited budget to do things - so eSO only has a set budget of money & man-hours they can dedicate to something. If they were to dedicate time into making a vet overland toggle/instance/server... where would they get the man-hours from, and who would lose out?

- Vet Dungeons? The community that loves these already complains the few dungeons they get a year isn't enough I believe. They will be peeved if they suddenly find that for a year they'll get either only 1 or no new dungeons

- PvP? The PvP community is already in decline due to years of now effort and manpower spent on it, with a myriad of issues and problems. Having what few ppl are working on it taken off it... would kill the Cyrodil scene, and hugely negatively effect the BG scene

- Crafting / housing / etc? People like looking forward to new houses, new systems in place. ZOS has shown a willingness to try different things. How would everyone feel if suddenly that wasn't going to happen for a year due to Vet Overland?

- Questing? Take a look at how negative ppl are to the current questing. Questing quality has deteriorated, and if it gets shortchanged any further... ZOS might find the majority of the playerbase starting to leave & not come back if what they come for gets even worse.

So I ask you again: What aspect of the game & the associated players would you like to cripple for the 6-12? months it would take to implement what you're after? What aspects of the game would you not care if it didn't change, get improved or added on in a 6-12 month period? What part of the player base do you want to annoy/turn-away to get what you want?

It's hard for me to explain why counting money as ZoS is a bad idea. But any new developments and systems naturally require money, and we have no idea how much it actually costs. But you say that ZoS is some kind of small indie studio, where the same people are responsible for the houses and for the combat content.

What he is saying is that everything has an opportunity cost. We know roughly the volume of content that ESO delivers in a year, so the cost/benefit of some other content needs to be evaluated against the loss of some of this yearly output. For me, making bugs and pirates hard in overland has practically no value.

But this, alas, does not fix the problem. As well as explaining that the number of furniture slots is limited does not technically fix the problem of large empty houses, which ZoS continues to do. Overland doesn't get any more fun for anyone from these explanations.
I don't understand why these conversations turn into a discussion of costs for the company, when no one has the slightest idea how much a particular development costs.
Constantly asking who is the minority and who is the majority? There are many examples of successful and popular games where the difficulty for 90% of the content is not absurdly trivial. There are many MMOs where pve and pvp are perfectly combined. But some players argue that for some mystical reasons, eso will only be a successful game if it looks like a visual novel with completely dead pvp.
The main purpose of these threads is to state that the overland is terribly boring. And most counterarguments just bombard us with costs. Well ... Okay. If ZoS really can't create interesting overland content, where a good population without events would be maintained, because it's expensive and players don't appreciate the gameplay, then this is very bad. This is really very bad. the game has alienated most people who like to enjoy primarily interesting gameplay. The game pushed them away even before OT. Mandatory level progression system = / = difficulty. The Overland was just as tiresome.

I'm not sure if you understand what is meant by opportunity cost but that aside, lets look at overland:

- It has the richest overland content of all the big AAA mmorpg by far already.
- like every other game in existence, players eventually overpower overland content, this is due to skill and gear etc. for e.g this is already starting to happen in new world.
- I never hear complaining in guilds, and i'm personally happy with overland. The reason i'm happy is that I understand that yhe idea that overland will somehow become exciting because its harder is flawed. Making donkeys and blood bugs harder is not fun content, i.e having to hit something 15 times instead of 4 times and dodge more when i'm either heading somewhere or farming sounds annoying as hell.
- We already have harder overland content, world bosses and craglorn and then all the vet PVE content. Re Craglorn people don't go there because its a wonderful overland experience, they go there to farm mobs or meetup for Dungeons.

In saying all that I don't not see the harm in scaling up all mobs by a percentage if this could be done in a cost effective way

trackdemon5512

"

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Here are a few things that have made the game more popular:
Cancellation of a mandatory subscription.
Cancellation of division of alliances.
Free exploration of the world without levels.
DLC`s quality was much higher than vanilla.
Excellent and completely replayable High-End content.

And easy overland as confirmed by player metrics of the entire playerbase

Which has always been so. I wrote about this in the post you quoted. The only nerfed location is Craglorn.

@Parasaurolophus Silver and Gold were nerfed. That is what they are speaking to and something Rich has stated.

No ... Of course it was weakened in order to even out all of the overall complexity. But these zones differed simply by increased requirements for the character's rank. The difficulty didn't start to skyrocket when reaching VR. It grew as gradually as in the zones of your alliance.

I think many of these newer players, and even some of the older players, forget how leveling was with the original game.
- each zone had mobs of its own level
- the final boss of the main story, Molag Bal, was set for lvl 50
- zones afterwards had increased difficulty with Cadwell Silver/Gold. Veteran Rank Difficulty
- MOST IMPORTANTLY: the amount of experience one needed to get to VR16 was equivalent to the amount needed to get to CP810 after the Murkmire update

That last point is the doozy. The world would consistently have enemies above your level. Your gear and level were consistently under the max as it would take forever for you to get to VR16 and wear such gear. As a player you were continually weaker than the zone you entered but stronger than the zone you came from.

When this was all later converted to CP160 and players could go above that threshold everyone became more powerful more easily and without as much of the grind thanks to ZOS putting in the XP-per-level scaling system.

But at the same time, enemies that had been different levels and VR ranks were all upped to the max: CP160. Everything is this game went up in power significantly. The only thing that were tweaked for less difficulty was the Craglorn so that looks mechanic wise it could be done solo. Those enemies are all CP160 but in that zone only do they hit slightly harder and have more resistances. They have no unique attacks, they were just built to be hardier and it’s not a scaling thing.

Craglorn remains to this day the least engaged in zone for story content just because of that difficulty bump caused by those increased resistances and damage output.

spartaxoxo

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Craglorn remains to this day the least engaged in zone for story content just because of that difficulty bump caused by those increased resistances and damage output.

Yup. Even during the Year One event, people preferred to get their event ticket from Wrothgar. Some of that was the drops as people like Briarheart. But there was also the perception (incorrectly) that it would be easier to get your event tickets from there and just go about your day.

So many of my guild mates were shocked to learn about the daily quest "Taken Alive" in Craglorn that's easier and faster than even the Wrothgar delve. It's because hardly anyone does Craglorn. It's arguably the easiest daily in the entire game. But, it's different to the rest of Craglorn (which is generally harder). So people don't learn it's there since the rest of Craglorn takes too long.

aurelius_fx

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

CP5

aurelius_fx wrote: »

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

But if you give the enemies the ability to do things in combat to warrant being a threat, that would break the server, apparently. Truth be told, once the fact that most enemies are designed to waste their own time comes to a player, that's when they decide if it is something they want to deal with, and there are definitely many people who feel the same way you do.

trackdemon5512

CP5 wrote: »

aurelius_fx wrote: »

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

But if you give the enemies the ability to do things in combat to warrant being a threat, that would break the server, apparently. Truth be told, once the fact that most enemies are designed to waste their own time comes to a player, that's when they decide if it is something they want to deal with, and there are definitely many people who feel the same way you do.

You and others here need to watch Matt Firor for IGN’s Unfiltered hour long 2021 interview on the game. In it he notes that with the original game has a myriad of issues that while rooted in traditional rpg/mmorpg mechanics it made the game extremely inaccessible.
- players unable to quest with other players due to different places in the story
- Players unable to return to older areas because enemies were so easy and they got no experience
- guild members unable to play with other guild members

And so One Tamriel came out and the game mechanics became more adventure Zelda like. New players were able to get on and adventure equally as well as they’re CP500 counterparts. Like playing GTA Online, level didn’t matter so much as player competency and knowledge of the game. CP provides an incentive bonus to level but not one that in all cases except vet dungeons and trials mattered.

And so ESO became a rare mmorpg-esque game that succeeded on console. And console became a key component of the player base. ZOS now develops the game for everyone on all three platforms, new and old players, so that they can stay together. That’s the money makers.

And with the console came limitations. Not everyone has a high end top of the line PC to run their game. So every patch and update has to be designed with it running on console, namely base PS4 and base XBOX One.

Does anyone remember Dragonguard? That DLC basically broke the game on console. Memory issues abounded. The developers couldn’t add new animations, moves, mechanics, etc because they just wouldn’t work on console. And so the focus of the developers since has been making the game more performant so that it can be expanded and they’ve made strides as the game in its current state couldn’t possibly run on those base consoles without optimizations.

Now ZOS is not abandoning the console crowd which amounts to 2/3rds or more of its base. It’s not going back on a winning formula that made the game accessible. And it’s highly likely that if they tried it would literally break the game. That the game can’t handle more instances and systems of a certain complexity.

Getting more mechanics for overland enemies or difficulty sliders just aren’t happening. Not only is there not enough of a desire for such but the consequences of splitting the game population AND possibly just straight breaking the game aren’t worth it.

colossalvoids

spartaxoxo wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Craglorn remains to this day the least engaged in zone for story content just because of that difficulty bump caused by those increased resistances and damage output.

Yup. Even during the Year One event, people preferred to get their event ticket from Wrothgar.

So many of my guild mates were shocked to learn about the daily quest "Taken Alive" in Craglorn that's easier and faster than even the Wrothgar delve. It's because hardly anyone does Craglorn.

Guess because of that pceu Crag was flooded as hell and much more laggy than Wrothgar at that time. Day and night people were spamming chat with "how to find a daily" requests so it's anecdotal to assume Craglorn is more dead then any other place. Just visit some popular Craglorn zones and then Reapers, Malabar or any other not so popular zone and the difference is pretty apparent. Zos would anyway draw people away from literally any zone with their event spam.

Anyway current Craglorn have almost nothing to do with anything people are asking for, it's long lost thing since one tam times.

spartaxoxo

colossalvoids wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Craglorn remains to this day the least engaged in zone for story content just because of that difficulty bump caused by those increased resistances and damage output.

Yup. Even during the Year One event, people preferred to get their event ticket from Wrothgar.

So many of my guild mates were shocked to learn about the daily quest "Taken Alive" in Craglorn that's easier and faster than even the Wrothgar delve. It's because hardly anyone does Craglorn.

Guess because of that pceu Crag was flooded as hell and much more laggy than Wrothgar at that time. Day and night people were spamming chat with "how to find a daily" requests so it's anecdotal to assume Craglorn is more dead then any other place. Just visit some popular Craglorn zones and then Reapers, Malabar or any other not so popular zone and the difference is pretty apparent. Zos would anyway draw people away from literally any zone with their event spam.

Anyway current Craglorn have almost nothing to do with anything people are asking for, it's long lost thing since one tam times.

During the event might be anecdotal but ZOS already confirmed that Craglorn isn't used much as a general rule. And that is relevant. Because it's one of the examples of harder content that already failed.

Soulshine

It's never going to happen.

No matter how much griping some may engage in about this issue, ZoS has proven repeatedly by steps already taken in the past that elevating general zone damage and difficulty is not something they want to do. They tried it, it backfired, they moved on.

Parasaurolophus

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

aurelius_fx wrote: »

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

But if you give the enemies the ability to do things in combat to warrant being a threat, that would break the server, apparently. Truth be told, once the fact that most enemies are designed to waste their own time comes to a player, that's when they decide if it is something they want to deal with, and there are definitely many people who feel the same way you do.

You and others here need to watch Matt Firor for IGN’s Unfiltered hour long 2021 interview on the game. In it he notes that with the original game has a myriad of issues that while rooted in traditional rpg/mmorpg mechanics it made the game extremely inaccessible.
- players unable to quest with other players due to different places in the story
- Players unable to return to older areas because enemies were so easy and they got no experience
- guild members unable to play with other guild members

And so One Tamriel came out and the game mechanics became more adventure Zelda like. New players were able to get on and adventure equally as well as they’re CP500 counterparts. Like playing GTA Online, level didn’t matter so much as player competency and knowledge of the game. CP provides an incentive bonus to level but not one that in all cases except vet dungeons and trials mattered.

And so ESO became a rare mmorpg-esque game that succeeded on console. And console became a key component of the player base. ZOS now develops the game for everyone on all three platforms, new and old players, so that they can stay together. That’s the money makers.

And with the console came limitations. Not everyone has a high end top of the line PC to run their game. So every patch and update has to be designed with it running on console, namely base PS4 and base XBOX One.

Does anyone remember Dragonguard? That DLC basically broke the game on console. Memory issues abounded. The developers couldn’t add new animations, moves, mechanics, etc because they just wouldn’t work on console. And so the focus of the developers since has been making the game more performant so that it can be expanded and they’ve made strides as the game in its current state couldn’t possibly run on those base consoles without optimizations.

Now ZOS is not abandoning the console crowd which amounts to 2/3rds or more of its base. It’s not going back on a winning formula that made the game accessible. And it’s highly likely that if they tried it would literally break the game. That the game can’t handle more instances and systems of a certain complexity.

Getting more mechanics for overland enemies or difficulty sliders just aren’t happening. Not only is there not enough of a desire for such but the consequences of splitting the game population AND possibly just straight breaking the game aren’t worth it.

Note that Matt says nothing about difficulty. He says the players were unnecessarily divided. Friends could not play with each other because they were separated by an alliance, different levels, different quest phases. If you brought your friend into the game, then you could not complete quests with him. To start playing with a friend, I created a new character. However, it is strange that the ZoS did not give us the opportunity to replay the quests. I just can't imagine a situation like one player in a party doing quests, and another just standing by?
I don't know what the situation is on consoles, but you literally draw me a sunny country of ponies and butterflies, where 10lvl players and 2000+ cp players have the same fun in overland on dolmens and ... world bosses ... what else is there in overland?
In my experience, I'll say it again, the quests in the new chapter end in 4 days. "Anchors" do not have a worthy reward, are designed for a group and are very tightly tightened. Experienced players simply complete all achievements, complete quests and never return to the zone.
If everything was as good as you say, ZoS would not have to inflate the population of the location with the delayed release of new motives and too frequent events.

Also, why do you think that console players are 2/3 of the base? Can I see the data somewhere?

And I also wanted to say that adding new instances is a server business, not a console.

trackdemon5512

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

aurelius_fx wrote: »

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

But if you give the enemies the ability to do things in combat to warrant being a threat, that would break the server, apparently. Truth be told, once the fact that most enemies are designed to waste their own time comes to a player, that's when they decide if it is something they want to deal with, and there are definitely many people who feel the same way you do.

You and others here need to watch Matt Firor for IGN’s Unfiltered hour long 2021 interview on the game. In it he notes that with the original game has a myriad of issues that while rooted in traditional rpg/mmorpg mechanics it made the game extremely inaccessible.
- players unable to quest with other players due to different places in the story
- Players unable to return to older areas because enemies were so easy and they got no experience
- guild members unable to play with other guild members

And so One Tamriel came out and the game mechanics became more adventure Zelda like. New players were able to get on and adventure equally as well as they’re CP500 counterparts. Like playing GTA Online, level didn’t matter so much as player competency and knowledge of the game. CP provides an incentive bonus to level but not one that in all cases except vet dungeons and trials mattered.

And so ESO became a rare mmorpg-esque game that succeeded on console. And console became a key component of the player base. ZOS now develops the game for everyone on all three platforms, new and old players, so that they can stay together. That’s the money makers.

And with the console came limitations. Not everyone has a high end top of the line PC to run their game. So every patch and update has to be designed with it running on console, namely base PS4 and base XBOX One.

Does anyone remember Dragonguard? That DLC basically broke the game on console. Memory issues abounded. The developers couldn’t add new animations, moves, mechanics, etc because they just wouldn’t work on console. And so the focus of the developers since has been making the game more performant so that it can be expanded and they’ve made strides as the game in its current state couldn’t possibly run on those base consoles without optimizations.

Now ZOS is not abandoning the console crowd which amounts to 2/3rds or more of its base. It’s not going back on a winning formula that made the game accessible. And it’s highly likely that if they tried it would literally break the game. That the game can’t handle more instances and systems of a certain complexity.

Getting more mechanics for overland enemies or difficulty sliders just aren’t happening. Not only is there not enough of a desire for such but the consequences of splitting the game population AND possibly just straight breaking the game aren’t worth it.

Note that Matt says nothing about difficulty. He says the players were unnecessarily divided. Friends could not play with each other because they were separated by an alliance, different levels, different quest phases. If you brought your friend into the game, then you could not complete quests with him. To start playing with a friend, I created a new character. However, it is strange that the ZoS did not give us the opportunity to replay the quests. I just can't imagine a situation like one player in a party doing quests, and another just standing by?
I don't know what the situation is on consoles, but you literally draw me a sunny country of ponies and butterflies, where 10lvl players and 2000+ cp players have the same fun in overland on dolmens and ... world bosses ... what else is there in overland?
In my experience, I'll say it again, the quests in the new chapter end in 4 days. "Anchors" do not have a worthy reward, are designed for a group and are very tightly tightened. Experienced players simply complete all achievements, complete quests and never return to the zone.
If everything was as good as you say, ZoS would not have to inflate the population of the location with the delayed release of new motives and too frequent events.

Also, why do you think that console players are 2/3 of the base? Can I see the data somewhere?

And I also wanted to say that adding new instances is a server business, not a console.

Adding new instances is a server business. But EVERYTHING runs off the Group Finder. The Group Finder has explicit pairing which you find for BGs, Dungeons, Cyrodiil, Trials. The Group Finder also performs the backbone work for the hidden pairings, namely putting players into zones with friends, changing instances, merging instances, checking on other players to see what zone they’re in at all times, etc.

Yes the servers need to handle all of that but at the same time those checks and background processes take up a portion of memory. It has been noticed on all platforms, such as by no longer showing where your guildmembers are at all times performance on your system improved. That’s localized, not generalized.

As for 2/3rds of them base Matt himself stated in 2016 that the active player population was split evenly amongst the three platforms: https://www.mmorpg.com/news/matt-firor-85-million-eso-players-right-now-based-on-sales-2000092780

Now this was 11 million registered players ago but there has been no sign that one platform has thrived while the others died. In fact there have been acknowledgements that the populations remain strong and continually present the development teams with managing said accounts across the board. It’s only reasonable from this evidence, and that ESO is promoting full next gen versions of its game, that the populations are roughly the same.

And Matt does mention difficulty. The fact that back then returning to original zones, with lower leveled players and enemies, was not rewarding to the veteran players. As such they tended not to go back. It created another divide. You have new players in one area, old players in another, and they never really meet. That was unhealthy for long term growth they found. Both groups of individuals found themselves isolated and so they moved from traditional MMORPG roots (to which Matt acknowledges he still gets pushback on to this day both internally and externally) to general adventure. And that change is why ESO has been successful.

spartaxoxo

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Now this was 11 million registered players ago but there has been no sign that one platform has thrived while the others died. In fact there have been acknowledgements that the populations remain strong and continually present the development teams with managing said accounts across the board. It’s only reasonable from this evidence, and that ESO is promoting full next gen versions of its game, that the populations are roughly the same.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if currently there was slighlty more console players than PC players. It seems a chunk of players left the PC version for New World. Probably not a ton, but maybe a little.

Seminolegirl1992

spartaxoxo wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

The results of ZOS’ recent BG test are in. They pretty much confirm what we’ve been saying about listening to the forum minorities:

*snip*

And before anyone gets and tries to use her freedom of choice point as an argument in favor of vet overland, understand that you have never had a choice. There was never an option between regular and vet overland. The game just had zones at different levels.

And since One Tamriel came about, with zones all the same level, the game and its population have only gotten bigger and stronger. The evidence is against vet overland.

That's probably the most bizarre piece of "analysis" I've read in this thread, congratulations.

How about:

- Forum group yells for years about bad BGs. Says they should be Deathmatch only. Points to players treating all BG modes as Deathmatches as proof
- ZOS gives in under the guise of a test. Only Deathmatch BGs. Said group is ecstatic
- Several weeks later the conclusion is reached that such a change was a failure.
- Not only did casual BG players dislike the change and not participate, but the numbers of those who argued for said change amounted to a poor number. Many didn’t stay around long after testing was implemented and the BG population was worse than before.

See any parallels with the harder overland difficulty crowd? Or that such changes result in a butterfly effect, driving away more at the cost of appeasing a few.

Most people wanted a DM only queue not the total removal of all other forms of BGs. And that's exactly the outcome of this test.

Yeah, I've always wanted a separate DM queue, so those of us who love objectives can participate in objectives. Choice is the paramount here. Always hated when people would DM in domination games ;/

Seminolegirl1992

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No that's not true. The zone simply demanded a higher level each time. But at your level, the mobs were always pretty easy.

It is true. The mobs were at a different level than you and that made them harder. So a lot of people didn't bother.

You have no idea how much more difficult it is. The mobs at the other end of the location were invincible. This literally prevented us from exploring the location. The very design of the questing put us on the rails from which we could not get off. Progress affected us too much. But that's not the point. I say that the zones of silver and gold were fundamentally no different from the locations of your alliance.

But it made it harder. And there was plenty of feedback then of people enjoying or not enjoying the increased challenge they represented. But in the end, as stated by ZOS most didn't like it and didn't bother. The mechs may not have different but that's not the only way to have increased difficulty.

I expected you to say so. But you are wrong. We did not like that they literally limit even within one location, making traveling to another location or to the other end of the current location not only difficult, but impossible. You just seem to have a bad idea of what this game was really like before OT. We just had a hugely increasing modifier for mobs. And as many wrote here, this is not at all what players who ask for a wet overland want.
But again ... We talked about whether the silver and gold were more difficult than the locations of your alliance. I just said that Rich's statement was very strange. After all, he also said that most people were completing the questline of their alliance.

^ Base game overland is annoying largely because there's enemies every two feet. It's bad design. I love the newer zones where things seem more reasonably spaced. And add to para's point that most folks just wanted to complete their alliance questline, and boom- you have little participation in cadwell's silver and gold. Again, tedious and engaging are two different things. A lot of folks here want more engaging content going forward, especially since the newer content is much more refined and interesting. I don't think they have a clear idea of whether people would enjoy more veteran content because of data from before 1T. Old quests from base game zones especially after main story is completed is not a good means of determining whether people want harder story bosses.

Soulshine

Seminolegirl1992 wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No that's not true. The zone simply demanded a higher level each time. But at your level, the mobs were always pretty easy.

It is true. The mobs were at a different level than you and that made them harder. So a lot of people didn't bother.

You have no idea how much more difficult it is. The mobs at the other end of the location were invincible. This literally prevented us from exploring the location. The very design of the questing put us on the rails from which we could not get off. Progress affected us too much. But that's not the point. I say that the zones of silver and gold were fundamentally no different from the locations of your alliance.

But it made it harder. And there was plenty of feedback then of people enjoying or not enjoying the increased challenge they represented. But in the end, as stated by ZOS most didn't like it and didn't bother. The mechs may not have different but that's not the only way to have increased difficulty.

I expected you to say so. But you are wrong. We did not like that they literally limit even within one location, making traveling to another location or to the other end of the current location not only difficult, but impossible. You just seem to have a bad idea of what this game was really like before OT. We just had a hugely increasing modifier for mobs. And as many wrote here, this is not at all what players who ask for a wet overland want.
But again ... We talked about whether the silver and gold were more difficult than the locations of your alliance. I just said that Rich's statement was very strange. After all, he also said that most people were completing the questline of their alliance.

^ Base game overland is annoying largely because there's enemies every two feet. It's bad design. I love the newer zones where things seem more reasonably spaced. And add to para's point that most folks just wanted to complete their alliance questline, and boom- you have little participation in cadwell's silver and gold. Again, tedious and engaging are two different things. A lot of folks here want more engaging content going forward, especially since the newer content is much more refined and interesting. I don't think they have a clear idea of whether people would enjoy more veteran content because of data from before 1T. Old quests from base game zones especially after main story is completed is not a good means of determining whether people want harder story bosses.

They don't have to look at old data to know that.

Just a few days ago, I watched part of a stream between Xynode and Rich Lambert. They were doing vet dungeons together, when Lair of Maarselok popped for them. During the run, Rich mentioned that it is one of the dungeons that they had to change because it had the fewest amount of player clears on vet.

I have heard him say things like this before and not just about dungeons but also regarding zone content. They pull data off the server for all kinds of things and can easily see what level of content most players tend to do successfully and where they fail. It's not rocket science to figure out from a financial standpoint what is going to continue to sustain your player base based on what they are already doing -- and on what they are already choosing NOT to do.

kargen27

""Freedom of choice" applies to literally all dungeons and trials, and ZOS used exactly the same tech in overland."

A trial is a very small miniscule thing compared to a zone that is limited to 12 players in one instance. It has what maybe 10 unique mobs and four or five bosses. One zone has mud crabs, skeevers, Ogres, ghosts, skeletons, zombies, and one or two other things I am forgetting. They would need to go back and design mechanics for all those mobs. And they couldn't be cookie cutter mechanics either or that would get complaints.

Trials were created to be run several times with a narrow scope about what takes place inside. A good part of overland is the story and the stories are once and done. Going back and creating harder content for once and done doesn't make sense. Overland is also where players go to harvest, find skyshards, do antiquities and a few other things. harder content isn't going to interest someone looking for Columbine. It isn't a popular idea and it isn't a practical idea. Trying to tie it to something completely unrelated isn't going to change that.

trackdemon5512

kargen27 wrote: »

""Freedom of choice" applies to literally all dungeons and trials, and ZOS used exactly the same tech in overland."

A trial is a very small miniscule thing compared to a zone that is limited to 12 players in one instance. It has what maybe 10 unique mobs and four or five bosses. One zone has mud crabs, skeevers, Ogres, ghosts, skeletons, zombies, and one or two other things I am forgetting. They would need to go back and design mechanics for all those mobs. And they couldn't be cookie cutter mechanics either or that would get complaints.

Trials were created to be run several times with a narrow scope about what takes place inside. A good part of overland is the story and the stories are once and done. Going back and creating harder content for once and done doesn't make sense. Overland is also where players go to harvest, find skyshards, do antiquities and a few other things. harder content isn't going to interest someone looking for Columbine. It isn't a popular idea and it isn't a practical idea. Trying to tie it to something completely unrelated isn't going to change that.

I’ll add on that trials allow for a give and take. The server doesn’t have to deal with tracking as many possible players at once (instance is capped at 12) and segregating them to more performant instances. Instead that extra headroom goes to allowing bosses unique mechanics. Look at the final boss where players get adds, multiple effects, wild debuffs, and a second area that isn’t affected by the main battleground. That kind of thing is impossible in overland.

And as you said look at the thoughts that went into said mechanics. Why would you do all of that programming for a one and done overland instance in a story?

spartaxoxo wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Now this was 11 million registered players ago but there has been no sign that one platform has thrived while the others died. In fact there have been acknowledgements that the populations remain strong and continually present the development teams with managing said accounts across the board. It’s only reasonable from this evidence, and that ESO is promoting full next gen versions of its game, that the populations are roughly the same.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if currently there was slighlty more console players than PC players. It seems a chunk of players left the PC version for New World. Probably not a ton, but maybe a little.

With the barrier to entry for a capable console to play ESO being fairly lower than a game playing PC I agree that console populations are likely more than PC.

I can’t speak to the PC crowd but does anyone know if the usage of add-ons have led to self-segregation for PC content? Like those who go the natural ZOS way and those who use add-ons for any possible advantage?

CP5

You guys are amusing. Yes, trial instances have fewer players, meaning that you need more instances to satisfy the same player count. If you made an optional overland, first you would have a population of players who would be interested in it, and you would just shuffle people around, not even needing new instances. And second, if adding instances was such a daunting task, wouldn't poor ZOS need to cut back how many zones they make, else spread the player base too thin over the many sprawling instances?

And again, "why do it for one and done quest?" First, haven't even done them once, as I've said, as others have said. I did probably 3% of western skyrims questing, and none of blackwoods, an update like this would encourage players to actually do that content. And don't forget that updating the zone would make going there actually interesting, not just a thing you have to begrudgingly deal with to deal with the quest.

If instances were that hard for ZOS to implement on the server, they wouldn't have as many zones as they do, and would need restrictions on how many dungeon instances could be run at once. Neither are true.

Amottica

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Here are a few things that have made the game more popular:
Cancellation of a mandatory subscription.
Cancellation of division of alliances.
Free exploration of the world without levels.
DLC`s quality was much higher than vanilla.
Excellent and completely replayable High-End content.

And easy overland as confirmed by player metrics of the entire playerbase

Which has always been so. I wrote about this in the post you quoted. The only nerfed location is Craglorn.

@Parasaurolophus Silver and Gold were nerfed. That is what they are speaking to and something Rich has stated.

No ... Of course it was weakened in order to even out all of the overall complexity. But these zones differed simply by increased requirements for the character's rank. The difficulty didn't start to skyrocket when reaching VR. It grew as gradually as in the zones of your alliance.

Maybe but it is hard to actually measure that now. I do find it interesting how these comments made by Rich have been noted many times in this thread and people have replied to it but it is just now that people are saying they were not really difficult.

Adding to this post.

I spoke with a guildmate that has been here since beta. He explained that the vet zones would have been easier if someone had over-leveled them and more challenging if someone was under-level. So it is not a matter of perspective but a matter of one's character level vs the level of the vet zone. The same was the case with earlier zones.

They also explained that all the zones seemed to have been made a little easier with One Tamriel and that would also suggest that the vet zones were more challenging than the same zones are today.

Parasaurolophus

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

aurelius_fx wrote: »

it sucks when you bring someone to try the game out and then 30 minutes in they realize that it's impossible for them to die doing traditional rpg questing content... immersion breaking for the big bad boss of a cavern to die without a threat and mind numb boring for anyone with any prior knowledge of gaming is definitely not a good first impression for someone expecting an action oriented rpg game similar from past iterations...

you don't have to implement all those intricate sliders or mechanics, just make it so mobs aren't brainless stools made out of wet cardboard, increase aggro range but decrease how often they show, make them ambush you by stealth or walking around the corner once players are detected in X place, anything! you can literally stand without doing anything and not get a dent in your health bar, so called "dangerous" roads are merely inconvenient at worst to travel by

But if you give the enemies the ability to do things in combat to warrant being a threat, that would break the server, apparently. Truth be told, once the fact that most enemies are designed to waste their own time comes to a player, that's when they decide if it is something they want to deal with, and there are definitely many people who feel the same way you do.

You and others here need to watch Matt Firor for IGN’s Unfiltered hour long 2021 interview on the game. In it he notes that with the original game has a myriad of issues that while rooted in traditional rpg/mmorpg mechanics it made the game extremely inaccessible.
- players unable to quest with other players due to different places in the story
- Players unable to return to older areas because enemies were so easy and they got no experience
- guild members unable to play with other guild members

And so One Tamriel came out and the game mechanics became more adventure Zelda like. New players were able to get on and adventure equally as well as they’re CP500 counterparts. Like playing GTA Online, level didn’t matter so much as player competency and knowledge of the game. CP provides an incentive bonus to level but not one that in all cases except vet dungeons and trials mattered.

And so ESO became a rare mmorpg-esque game that succeeded on console. And console became a key component of the player base. ZOS now develops the game for everyone on all three platforms, new and old players, so that they can stay together. That’s the money makers.

And with the console came limitations. Not everyone has a high end top of the line PC to run their game. So every patch and update has to be designed with it running on console, namely base PS4 and base XBOX One.

Does anyone remember Dragonguard? That DLC basically broke the game on console. Memory issues abounded. The developers couldn’t add new animations, moves, mechanics, etc because they just wouldn’t work on console. And so the focus of the developers since has been making the game more performant so that it can be expanded and they’ve made strides as the game in its current state couldn’t possibly run on those base consoles without optimizations.

Now ZOS is not abandoning the console crowd which amounts to 2/3rds or more of its base. It’s not going back on a winning formula that made the game accessible. And it’s highly likely that if they tried it would literally break the game. That the game can’t handle more instances and systems of a certain complexity.

Getting more mechanics for overland enemies or difficulty sliders just aren’t happening. Not only is there not enough of a desire for such but the consequences of splitting the game population AND possibly just straight breaking the game aren’t worth it.

Note that Matt says nothing about difficulty. He says the players were unnecessarily divided. Friends could not play with each other because they were separated by an alliance, different levels, different quest phases. If you brought your friend into the game, then you could not complete quests with him. To start playing with a friend, I created a new character. However, it is strange that the ZoS did not give us the opportunity to replay the quests. I just can't imagine a situation like one player in a party doing quests, and another just standing by?
I don't know what the situation is on consoles, but you literally draw me a sunny country of ponies and butterflies, where 10lvl players and 2000+ cp players have the same fun in overland on dolmens and ... world bosses ... what else is there in overland?
In my experience, I'll say it again, the quests in the new chapter end in 4 days. "Anchors" do not have a worthy reward, are designed for a group and are very tightly tightened. Experienced players simply complete all achievements, complete quests and never return to the zone.
If everything was as good as you say, ZoS would not have to inflate the population of the location with the delayed release of new motives and too frequent events.

Also, why do you think that console players are 2/3 of the base? Can I see the data somewhere?

And I also wanted to say that adding new instances is a server business, not a console.

Adding new instances is a server business. But EVERYTHING runs off the Group Finder. The Group Finder has explicit pairing which you find for BGs, Dungeons, Cyrodiil, Trials. The Group Finder also performs the backbone work for the hidden pairings, namely putting players into zones with friends, changing instances, merging instances, checking on other players to see what zone they’re in at all times, etc.

Yes the servers need to handle all of that but at the same time those checks and background processes take up a portion of memory. It has been noticed on all platforms, such as by no longer showing where your guildmembers are at all times performance on your system improved. That’s localized, not generalized.

As for 2/3rds of them base Matt himself stated in 2016 that the active player population was split evenly amongst the three platforms: https://www.mmorpg.com/news/matt-firor-85-million-eso-players-right-now-based-on-sales-2000092780

Now this was 11 million registered players ago but there has been no sign that one platform has thrived while the others died. In fact there have been acknowledgements that the populations remain strong and continually present the development teams with managing said accounts across the board. It’s only reasonable from this evidence, and that ESO is promoting full next gen versions of its game, that the populations are roughly the same.

And Matt does mention difficulty. The fact that back then returning to original zones, with lower leveled players and enemies, was not rewarding to the veteran players. As such they tended not to go back. It created another divide. You have new players in one area, old players in another, and they never really meet. That was unhealthy for long term growth they found. Both groups of individuals found themselves isolated and so they moved from traditional MMORPG roots (to which Matt acknowledges he still gets pushback on to this day both internally and externally) to general adventure. And that change is why ESO has been successful.

Sorry, but I don't understand you. Locations are already divided into different instances. And all the processes that you described are taking place right now. What difference does it make if a server is running with four normal zone instances, or three normal and one veteran? Because higher damage / hp values ​​will require more calculations?
Let's be honest already... None of us really know how it actually works. How much computing power does this or that process require, and how much does ZoS have? Only IT specialists know about it. I'm sure Rich Lambert doesn't know about this either, because he's the creative director. I can say the same about finance. Nobody knows how profitable the game itself is and how much the development costs. And we will never know about it, because it is a trade secret of ZoS.
All such reasoning is based solely on subjective imagine and cannot be presented as facts.

Thanks for the platform population proof.

Regarding the difficult. The players are still divided and divided by nature. No one disputes many of OT's successful decisions. However, that doesn't make overland any more fun. Hight-cp players do not return to old locations just for a walk. I have already described the life cycle of each new dlc zone for an experienced player. And he gave circumstantial evidence that ZoS is artificially trying to keep the population by releasing new motives and events in the future. Again, I don’t understand you... Are you really saying that people who have already completed dlc within a few days may still be interested in it?
I understand the statement that overland can be just a stage on the road to the high end. Although I disagree with that. But no, ZoS is already releasing the second dlc without high-end content, where just a trivial zone is an end in itself. And there will be no new partners, no new resources... Nothing! Yes, they implemented the armory system and gave priority to the drop. But it looks so insignificant that I attribute it to covid. But where is the content? I will complete the Dead Lands in three days, and I will never return there by my own will.

tonyblack

As a player who did both WS and BW main quests I can confirm that there was no improvements which would suddenly make questing more enjoyable and engaging. It is same boring chore as it was 4 years ago.

spartaxoxo

tonyblack wrote: »

As a player who did both WS and BW main quests I can confirm that there was no improvements which would suddenly make questing more enjoyable and engaging. It is same boring chore as it was 4 years ago.

There was mechanics that you actually had to follow because the bosses had immunity phases that allowed them to live long to talk their trash. They definitely increased the difficulty of them. So they definitely did try to make them more interesting.

Like here's Summerset. Barely any real mechs just dust a mob quick. (Not my videoes)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UXZefVKjz-0

And this is the end boss in Markarth and the main villain of that year long story.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VCbVcOQn83I

[snip] There is clearly effort there. But it's still tuned to low levels. Because the story is for everyone.

[Edited for Baiting]

Nagastani

tonyblack wrote: »

As a player who did both WS and BW main quests I can confirm that there was no improvements which would suddenly make questing more enjoyable and engaging. It is same boring chore as it was 4 years ago.

Could not agree more.

In this regard nothing has changed and this is a big part of our theater. Nothing has changed, we are seeking meaningful change and honesty usually precedes this.

Nagastani

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

As a player who did both WS and BW main quests I can confirm that there was no improvements which would suddenly make questing more enjoyable and engaging. It is same boring chore as it was 4 years ago.

There was mechanics that you actually had to follow because the bosses had immunity phases that allowed them to live long to talk their trash. They definitely increased the difficulty of them. So they definitely did try to make them more interesting.

Like here's Summerset. Barely any real mechs just dust a mob quick. (Not my videoes)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UXZefVKjz-0

And this is the end boss in Markarth and the main villain of that year long story.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VCbVcOQn83I

[snip] There is clearly effort there. But it's still tuned to low levels. Because the story is for everyone.

[Edited for Baiting]

[snip]

We have identified a problem with overland content missing any form of realism or providing a tangible, believable and/or satisfying experience to accommodate the story. It lacks progression (what I refer to as progressive difficulty) although the story doesn't... this obviously is a problem that must be fixed.

This is not about 'leaving people behind', it is by no means a personal attack against anyone or to be taken as such.

Its simply a problem that needs to be addressed with the game. [snip] With ESO's current issues, why anyone would want to keep things where they are truly staggers the mind and is -not- good for the game itself... never mind all of us. Arguing for the sake of meaningful change is better than being fully committed to completely resisting any change, because the world changes. People change. Roles in companies change.

But with that said, I must agree that ultimately the direction has to be set by whomever is over the game. Right now ESO is stuck in the mud. All of us hope ESO can get things moving again, sincerely. I suspect that change is on the way although, meaningful change is a slow and deliberate process yet hopefully with the acquisition by Microsoft the game can be delivered. [snip]

[Edited for Baiting and to Remove response to removed content]

Nagastani

[Quoted Post Removed]

[snip]

We have two distinct issues here that over time simply were never addressed:

a) Lack of ability to alter difficulty over things like zones. Although of course groups can choose between norm or vet dungeons. But we know this already. However please keep in mind when we say 'zone' this phrase correlates with story because the story occurs in the zones. So we could also safely say, we lack the ability to adjust difficulty across the story quests.
b) Lack of attention to detail in what I'll refer to as 'story mechanics'. So PvE Dungeons have mechanics sometimes and story actors should as well. Meaning. If I'm at a tense moment in the story where I will face 'the boss' then that boss should be by *NATURE* 'strong and experienced' as is a prerequisite for being called a 'boss'. Otherwise... why have us face a boss that is about as strong as a Cereal Box and puts out rewards like a Happy Meal. Having this issue makes people think the Dev Team didn't care, regardless of whatever the actual reason is for this lack of attention to detail.

Those who (based on both now and previous arguments) agree with what I am also saying agree with this message, humbly and very respectfully ask for the Dev Team to please fix this.

Now, these issues are similar yet different. There are those who would wish to level with difficulty, in order to push both themselves, their character choices as well as their character to greatness. There are those who wish to relax and strike out casually at a lesser difficulty and enjoy the ride. As far as I know, no one here has any problem with either of these two choices or people deciding for themselves which is best for them. However, instead of us collaborating on ways to see this done on many pages I see people fighting it, completely resisting any form of change that really does not, or I say, should not, impact them.

[snip]

I challenge the Dev Team (or especially if someone new comes onboard) to please not accept less, do not leave us living with the mistakes of the past. Take us to the future please, set your sights on the greater, we have all lived in the past long enough.

[Edited to Remove response to Removed content]

Psiion

Greetings again,

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