800k people don't seem to mind difficult overworld

temerley

SilverBride wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

No one is asking to go back to veteran zones. What people are asking for is an OPTION to play them that way, and people here are basically saying "no, I don't want to allow you to play the way you like even though it doesn't effect me in any way."

I am not against anyone playing the way they like as long as it remains within the confines of what is good for the game. Optional veteran levels would affect everyone as I will reiterate below.

• It would separate the playerbase
• It would give an unfair advantage to end game players IF there were increased rewards and drops
• It would turn overland into end game content, which has never been its intended purpose
• It would take time, manpower and cost that is better spent on issues that would benefit everyone

Rich Lambert recently discussed veteran levels in a Twitch stream that I linked in a previous post, and basically said no to the request.

If it will have better rewards, good players will move to vet overland.

Imagine a newbie, got anxiety don’t want to play with others. He/she wants pale order for solo content, goes to a wb for lead. All sweaties in vet overland so 1 week in still no help, quits the game cause it looks dead.

SilverBride

temerley wrote: »

Imagine a newbie, got anxiety don’t want to play with others. He/she wants pale order for solo content, goes to a wb for lead. All sweaties in vet overland so 1 week in still no help, quits the game cause it looks dead.

That is a very good reason to not have veteran levels, because in that scenario new players will all quit due to normal overland being dead and a lack of support.

temerley

I’d rather have a patch with performance improvements than something like this.

Armory is free so go save a build with no gear, no cp, and no attributes.

No need to punish casuals, newbies, and scrubs with separation of playerbase.

[Deleted User]

Hello everyone,

Recently we've had to remove a few posts for baiting and flaming, content that is against the Forum Rules. For further posts please be sure to stay constructive and respectful to avoid thread derailment or action on one's own account.

Thank you for understanding.

trackdemon5512

temerley wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

No one is asking to go back to veteran zones. What people are asking for is an OPTION to play them that way, and people here are basically saying "no, I don't want to allow you to play the way you like even though it doesn't effect me in any way."

I am not against anyone playing the way they like as long as it remains within the confines of what is good for the game. Optional veteran levels would affect everyone as I will reiterate below.

• It would separate the playerbase
• It would give an unfair advantage to end game players IF there were increased rewards and drops
• It would turn overland into end game content, which has never been its intended purpose
• It would take time, manpower and cost that is better spent on issues that would benefit everyone

Rich Lambert recently discussed veteran levels in a Twitch stream that I linked in a previous post, and basically said no to the request.

If it will have better rewards, good players will move to vet overland.

Imagine a newbie, got anxiety don’t want to play with others. He/she wants pale order for solo content, goes to a wb for lead. All sweaties in vet overland so 1 week in still no help, quits the game cause it looks dead.

Except as Matt explicitly states if they put in a difficultly slider then yes they have to put in rewards. That leads to having to figure out, develop, and implement said rewards. That means having to ensure said rewards are fair and balanced. That means trying how to figure out how to do this without splitting the entire community, either via instances or advantages from rewards.

This entire game has been moving away from splitting the game base since Clockwork City. Transmutation to stop grinding. Jewelry Crafting so that not just the elites get to make full gold and optimized builds. Perfected and Imperfect weapons minimizing the gaps to achieve (completing VMA is still a huge undertaking for many players and gating a bow and staff behind it seriously hurt endgame).

There just isn’t a need for any of this. The data shows that and the player base, the ones who don’t want it show it as well.

kargen27

temerley wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

No one is asking to go back to veteran zones. What people are asking for is an OPTION to play them that way, and people here are basically saying "no, I don't want to allow you to play the way you like even though it doesn't effect me in any way."

I am not against anyone playing the way they like as long as it remains within the confines of what is good for the game. Optional veteran levels would affect everyone as I will reiterate below.

• It would separate the playerbase
• It would give an unfair advantage to end game players IF there were increased rewards and drops
• It would turn overland into end game content, which has never been its intended purpose
• It would take time, manpower and cost that is better spent on issues that would benefit everyone

Rich Lambert recently discussed veteran levels in a Twitch stream that I linked in a previous post, and basically said no to the request.

If it will have better rewards, good players will move to vet overland.

Imagine a newbie, got anxiety don’t want to play with others. He/she wants pale order for solo content, goes to a wb for lead. All sweaties in vet overland so 1 week in still no help, quits the game cause it looks dead.

and that is the kick isn't it. Better rewards. Players say give us a more difficult overland to improve gameplay. It is pointed out more difficult content might not be popular and worth the time to develop. So better rewards gets mentioned. If the idea of a more difficult overland were popular they wouldn't need to offer anything to get us there. We would do it because it is fun.

Other side of that is if they do give better rewards players that don't really want to do the harder content will feel they need to for those rewards. Only way they don't feel that way is if the difference in rewards is insignificant which brings us back to not much incentive to go other than for fun.

I wouldn't mind seeing an option for a more difficult fight at the end of each story line but beyond that I don't really see the point. Other than story most players are in overland gathering materials, exploring, getting skyshards, surveys, antiquities, leveling guild lines things like that. A tougher fight doesn't really interest them because it it about getting from point A to point B. They know where to go for the tough fights.
Where the tough fights are in overland are often empty except for special events. There is still some good fights in Craglorn for lot of players but it is hard to find people willing to do them. There simply isn't an interest.

And you are right it isn't worth the risk of splitting the player base.

wolfie1.0.

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

The developers of this game [...] have already stated that creating such a slider ZOS not easy on an individual level as the game scales to you.

Source? As a programmer this would be incredibly easy. The level scaling is just a health/damage multiplier. All you would have to do to adjust this for different difficulty shards is add another multiplier to that. It is literally a single multiplication operation which requires no noticeable server resources nor programming effort. Like typing 1*0.3 vs. 1*0.3*1.2.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

In an MMORPG say you slid the slider to make the game easier for you rather than more difficult. Are you effectively gaming the system to cheese content?

Not at all because 1) the quality/frequency of drops/rewards and XP gained can be scaled based on the level of difficulty you are willing to face (again with an extremely simple multiplier operation) and 2) the only thing an easier difficulty in PVE overworld really buys you is convenience.

Besides for the easiest mode it would basically be unchanged from how it is now. You could even have just two modes for overworld to keep it simple: Normal (how it is now) and Veteran (increased difficulty, XP, rewards). That would be in keeping with the way they have set up dungeons, and the way it used to be with the old Veteran zones before One Tamriel, only as a universal OPTION. There is nothing bad about giving people options, especially when it WOULD be very easy to implement programmatically.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

What about other players joining you?

Much like War Mode in World of Warcraft, being invited to a group with someone on a different setting would inform you "the person inviting you is in X mode and you are in Y. Do you wish to join the group and be synced to their mode?" The person inviting in other words would determine the mode the group would be set to, and everyone in the group would be at the same level.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Changing individual difficulty is a selfish decision that has ramifications in a universal overworld, esp one in which you cannot control instances or switch to isolated servers.

It actually doesn't need to have ANY impact on the larger world if you understand how server sharding/instancing already works (which I explain in a previous post). Long story short, you CAN control instances and isolate servers: It is called sharding and it is already built into the game.

And keep in mind even people accustomed to Normal mode would benefit from the added DPS/skill of people who normally play on Veteran carrying some of their lower level/damage which would make getting invited to a veteran group, IF you accepted that invite, a lot less noticeable than you might imagine.

This is honestly a change that would really only benefit solo play by adding more options for people of different skill/gear/level/experience to enjoy, which is good for the longevity of the game while taking NOTHING from people who continue to play as it currently is.

Win win.

To be honest I think that this would actually work. One feature I like in NW is that you can flag for pvp in zones, and honestly I think this might have value to some players. Make Tamriel more involved. But give players the ability to opt out of it as well. I also think that there should be an option for players to opt out of the leveling scaling that occurs maybe in exchange for a small experience boost?

Cireous

SilverBride wrote: »

You can watch his entire reply, including his answer to an optional vet mode, from 1:48:00 through 1:51:11 on the link below.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s[/b]

That is tremendously disappointing. Thanks for linking this.

Welp, back to playing New World. Hated it in Beta, pleasantly surprised with it at launch. Its super organized inventory UI is seriously to die for. However, this running and chopping tree simulator desperately needs first person camera view. What a waste not having it in this environment. Also, I hate my boxy body and low texture face and all these terrible combat animations for magic weapons.

New World's Overland can be terrifying, though, so it will be a fun leveling experience. Due to the limitations on fast travel, death feels meaningful, making encounters generally more exciting. Not sure what it will be like at max level, but during the leveling experience, you're always fairly close to things that could end you if you're not careful.

This game reminds me of a blend of Dragon Age, Rift, ESO, and every survival game that focuses way too much on harvesting, fetching and crafting. It's definitely an interesting enough combo of (some) things I really like to entertain me for at least a little bit.

I wish Rich would reconsider and invest some time into making optional Overland difficulty. It could be done so much better than Craglorn and Caldwell Silver and Gold. Craglorn REQURED groups to get through the content, there was no choice in the matter. That's why I disliked it. Caldwell gave mobs WAY to much health, making encounters incredibly boring. The balance just needed to be right... and it never was.

Elsonso

Cireous wrote: »

New World's Overland can be terrifying, though, so it will be a fun leveling experience. Due to the limitations on fast travel, death feels meaningful, making encounters generally more exciting. Not sure what it will be like at max level, but during the leveling experience, you're always fairly close to things that could end you if you're not careful.

I play New World, too. That train is on a track that ends the dev team needs to build more track or the train is just going to crash.This is much the same as ESO when it started. I am happy to give them a chance, but there are a lot of things wrong with New World and only a short amount of time, and limited development resources, to fix them.

I would be fine with ZOS culling some of the QoL stuff from New World and adding it to ESO, but a lot of that stuff is probably already on the white board at ZOS (so to speak) because add-ons have already shown ZOS what they need to do.

Girl_Number8

Vhozek wrote: »

I think we should sit back and take a second look at this game's overworld to make it more interesting and exciting. Bumping up the mob difficulty seems to be a good start. I really doubt many people would complain. The only issue is that it can't just be done as a lone update but rather paired up with a sort of re-launch or massive event advertising the game. What do you think? What else could be implemented to make leveling exciting and not just a delay to end-game content? Because that's basically what it is, it's just a delay not even a challenging obstacle.

They need to do a change certainly but on the forums instead.

ZoS needs to create just one sticky thread for this topic. Mostly for the 800k people that do not want to see the same thread over and over again by a infinitesimal amount of players on the forums....

🍷

Kamatsu

Elsonso wrote: »

Kamatsu wrote: »

However as I've said every time I've responded to one of these threads. If those pushing this instead pushed Zenimax to offer alternate server's / instances for players where mobs had better ai, better skillsets, etc to make the game more difficult and challenging for them while leaving the rest of the playerbase to be in the 'not difficult' normal gameplay that the majority likes... I'd 100% back that.

Now that Microsoft owns Zenimax, maybe those who seek more difficult overland could start asking them to spend some money on ESO server equipment so new instances/server's could be implemented that has a harder overland for those who like it. I'd say that you'll probably have more luck now that previously when Zenimax wasn't owned by Microsoft.

ZOS is never going to do this. No business justification. The development, operations, and support are not matched by expected customer demand for the product. That is what I draw from all the statements that have been made on this subject, and ones like it.

Being owned by Microsoft does not change anything. Microsoft knows cloud, but ESO is not a cloud game. It is very much a game that is rooted in traditional datacenters. We can see the mess that the largest cloud provider in the world made of a cloud MMORPG that tried to scale up to ESO.

I personally agree on you. It makes little business sense to spend the money (on dev's, dev time, dev time off other things, etc) to develop something for a small fraction of the playerbase - especially when everything you've been doing since OT is trying to keep the playerbase playing together,.... the last thing you'd want to do is then split the playerbase up.

However I see this as likely the only real option for those who are wanting to make ESO overland more hard - as I doubt Zenimax will make the overland harder for everyone, after seeing what doing that has done to other games (ie see GW2). So for those who want harder overland... their options are either:

1. Try and get a personal difficulty/scale slider than only effect's them. Problem with this is all this will do is make fights longer, not harder, and doesn't take into account the fact that other players can/will fight same mobs as them.

2. Try and get a whole separate instance/server. This allows proper difficulty to be added, such as tuned ai with better skills. However this then splits the playerbase up, which is something that Zenimax doesn't seem to want to do.

I only brought up Zenimax being owned by MS being a 'now possible' thing is simple due to money factors. Microsoft & XBox Gaming likely have more means to throw money at something that Zenimax did/would, so chances are better that if a business case could somehow be made... it would likely be easier to get done with Microsoft in control now.

Also interesting tidbit of info: Regarding 'hardcore' players being the extreme minority... old WoW is a good example. Back in 2010 or such the WoW dev's talked about the changes they made to raiding in WotLK and why they did: Boils down to the fact that in launch WoW and BC, only around 6-7% of the playerbase ever entered a raid. For such a "raid or die" game, not even 10% of it's playerbase ever even attempted raids, yet alone complete any raid tiers.

The dev's who were working on raids were sad that so few ppl experienced the raids, so they made entry-level easier, did LFR, and eventually tied main story into doing LFR if you wanted to finish even the base expansion's story.

A reflection of just how small raider / hardcore / etc MMO population is. WoW focused on raid's because it's dev's and leads were all EQ raiders, not because the majority of the playerbase drooled after raids & hard content.

trackdemon5512

Yeah Harrowstorms are really challenging with a difficulty slider and potentially an entire zone fighting it at once.

ZOS realized 8 years ago that the only way you can keep content challenging for a few is instancing. And that’s why every delve and interior quest for Craglorn is instanced for 4 players only.

Ooooooooo how often are people replaying Craglorn quests? How often do I get requests “Please help with Shada’s Tear”?

It doesn’t work and ZOS isn’t going to instance an entire zone for people to challenge themselves solo because it’s a complete waste. And if those same people banded together they just make content easier for themselves and it’s still a complete waste. There is no solution for this in this game.

WhyMustItBe

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Yeah Harrowstorms are really challenging with a difficulty slider and potentially an entire zone fighting it at once.

ZOS realized 8 years ago that the only way you can keep content challenging for a few is instancing. And that’s why every delve and interior quest for Craglorn is instanced for 4 players only.

Ooooooooo how often are people replaying Craglorn quests? How often do I get requests “Please help with Shada’s Tear”?

It doesn’t work and ZOS isn’t going to instance an entire zone for people to challenge themselves solo because it’s a complete waste. And if those same people banded together they just make content easier for themselves and it’s still a complete waste. There is no solution for this in this game.

You don't know this. You aren't Rich Lambert. You don't work at ZOS. You don't have access to any data about what people do or don't like. You only know what YOU like. Yet you keep speaking as if you have some special knowledge about what everyone else who plays the game likes and take it upon yourself to speak for them.

No one should take any of this as anything other than one anonymous forum person's opinion. Certainly not the devs.

[snip]
[edited for baiting]

kargen27

wtlonewolf20 wrote: »

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

The developers of this game [...] have already stated that creating such a slider ZOS not easy on an individual level as the game scales to you.

Source? As a programmer this would be incredibly easy. The level scaling is just a health/damage multiplier. All you would have to do to adjust this for different difficulty shards is add another multiplier to that. It is literally a single multiplication operation which requires no noticeable server resources nor programming effort. Like typing 1*0.3 vs. 1*0.3*1.2.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

In an MMORPG say you slid the slider to make the game easier for you rather than more difficult. Are you effectively gaming the system to cheese content?

Not at all because 1) the quality/frequency of drops/rewards and XP gained can be scaled based on the level of difficulty you are willing to face (again with an extremely simple multiplier operation) and 2) the only thing an easier difficulty in PVE overworld really buys you is convenience.

Besides for the easiest mode it would basically be unchanged from how it is now. You could even have just two modes for overworld to keep it simple: Normal (how it is now) and Veteran (increased difficulty, XP, rewards). That would be in keeping with the way they have set up dungeons, and the way it used to be with the old Veteran zones before One Tamriel, only as a universal OPTION. There is nothing bad about giving people options, especially when it WOULD be very easy to implement programmatically.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

What about other players joining you?

Much like War Mode in World of Warcraft, being invited to a group with someone on a different setting would inform you "the person inviting you is in X mode and you are in Y. Do you wish to join the group and be synced to their mode?" The person inviting in other words would determine the mode the group would be set to, and everyone in the group would be at the same level.

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Changing individual difficulty is a selfish decision that has ramifications in a universal overworld, esp one in which you cannot control instances or switch to isolated servers.

It actually doesn't need to have ANY impact on the larger world if you understand how server sharding/instancing already works (which I explain in a previous post). Long story short, you CAN control instances and isolate servers: It is called sharding and it is already built into the game.

And keep in mind even people accustomed to Normal mode would benefit from the added DPS/skill of people who normally play on Veteran carrying some of their lower level/damage which would make getting invited to a veteran group, IF you accepted that invite, a lot less noticeable than you might imagine.

This is honestly a change that would really only benefit solo play by adding more options for people of different skill/gear/level/experience to enjoy, which is good for the longevity of the game while taking NOTHING from people who continue to play as it currently is.

Win win.

To be honest I think that this would actually work. One feature I like in NW is that you can flag for pvp in zones, and honestly I think this might have value to some players. Make Tamriel more involved. But give players the ability to opt out of it as well. I also think that there should be an option for players to opt out of the leveling scaling that occurs maybe in exchange for a small experience boost?

New World was designed for that to happen. ESO was not. New Worlds entire map has choke points and PvP centric objectives/locations. ESO does not. New World is a very small map compared to all of Tamriel. You are going to find players interested in PvP across the map. With ESO the population is to scattered.

Going to the post you quoted.

"As a programmer this would be incredibly easy. The level scaling is just a health/damage multiplier."

All that does is make fights last longer. It doesn't make them more difficult or more interesting. Just longer. If scaling is all that were required ZoS could just give us foods and drinks that gimp our build in a variety of ways.

WhyMustItBe

kargen27 wrote: »

All that does is make fights last longer. It doesn't make them more difficult or more interesting. Just longer. If scaling is all that were required ZoS could just give us foods and drinks that gimp our build in a variety of ways.

I agree with this actually, however also keep in mind they still have all the data from back when all the original zones HAD veteran modes before One Tamriel. So, these types of increased difficulty mechanics largely already exist in game files (or archived files from earlier client versions anyway). Things like mobs attacking faster, moving smarter, and using abilities more frequently were already coded for. All that work has already been done. That is the reason I think it would be a shame not to do the easy part to add a simple opt-in toggle for people to turn that mode on/off as they like, without requiring anyone to play any different than they do now if they didn't want to.

All that work is just wasted.

trackdemon5512

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Yeah Harrowstorms are really challenging with a difficulty slider and potentially an entire zone fighting it at once.

ZOS realized 8 years ago that the only way you can keep content challenging for a few is instancing. And that’s why every delve and interior quest for Craglorn is instanced for 4 players only.

Ooooooooo how often are people replaying Craglorn quests? How often do I get requests “Please help with Shada’s Tear”?

It doesn’t work and ZOS isn’t going to instance an entire zone for people to challenge themselves solo because it’s a complete waste. And if those same people banded together they just make content easier for themselves and it’s still a complete waste. There is no solution for this in this game.

You don't know this. You aren't Rich Lambert. You don't work at ZOS. You don't have access to any data about what people do or don't like. You only know what YOU like. Yet you keep speaking as if you have some special knowledge about what everyone else who plays the game likes and take it upon yourself to speak for them.

No one should take any of this as anything other than one anonymous forum person's opinion. Certainly not the devs.

[snip]

Except Matt Firor does have the data. Matt Firor, President of Zenimax Online Studios, whose job is not only is to produce the game but keep it going and financially solvent. And as you were referred to it before they clearly have the data and history to reflect this.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

Matt clearly knows what players like. He and the rest of ZOS have the data to back it up. And when he says that yes, he too, does enjoy challenging content but that the data and sales conclusively point out that’s not the case for ESO’s population and development of such systems isn’t in the best interest of the company for which he’s president of you and all of the naysayers should take note.

It’s clear that a number of ppl here have ideas of what would make their game experiences more enjoyable. Problem is that they don’t make the game and that neither their subscription nor ideas have any real weight with regards to real world data that the developers and producers have that’s analyzed and used to keep this game going for 8 years now.

[edited to remove quote]

WhyMustItBe

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

trackdemon5512

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

tonyblack

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

trackdemon5512

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

Go into the clip and continue to watch. Yes there is content to be made for limited instances and the challenges were thrown specifically to arenas, dungeons, and trials. But when it comes to overland content the ship has long sailed. Developing it isn’t worth it because the vast amount of the player base just will not engage with it that way.

This is why arenas, dungeons, and trials all have relatively easy normal modes and optional vet modes with hard modes and extra bosses. That is the limit to which they will make content difficult. Beyond that are achievements which isn’t the developer putting constraints on players but rather players doing it to themselves and the system taking notice.

You can’t do that for story content because story content can’t be repeated on the same toon. It’s one and done. And it doesn’t matter if you make overland harder as you’ll just negate that challenge by grouping.

SilverBride

tonyblack wrote: »

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

I have never heard anyone say that challenging content has no place in this game. But players need to find their challenges in the content that was developed specifically for this purpose, such as arenas, dungeons and trials, which is where Rich Lambert stated they are.

A lot of casual players like myself also enjoy challenges. I frequently fight World Bosses and run normal dungeons, and just recently have been testing myself in arenas. I have no interest in the moment in veteran versions of these but who knows, some day I may. But I do not want a challenge in every single thing I do, and when I do I know where to find them.

tonyblack

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

Go into the clip and continue to watch. Yes there is content to be made for limited instances and the challenges were thrown specifically to arenas, dungeons, and trials. But when it comes to overland content the ship has long sailed. Developing it isn’t worth it because the vast amount of the player base just will not engage with it that way.

This is why arenas, dungeons, and trials all have relatively easy normal modes and optional vet modes with hard modes and extra bosses. That is the limit to which they will make content difficult. Beyond that are achievements which isn’t the developer putting constraints on players but rather players doing it to themselves and the system taking notice.

You can’t do that for story content because story content can’t be repeated on the same toon. It’s one and done. And it doesn’t matter if you make overland harder as you’ll just negate that challenge by grouping.

Sorry but decades old data just isn't good enough justification why there should not be any changes or adjustments to existing and new content. Moreover, development cost and potential popularity is your personal opinion we both have no idea how much it is really cost or how popular it would be. But as long as half of released dlcs continue to cater to one group and another half to another there would always be complaints how one part is inaccessible and another trivially easy.

trackdemon5512

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

Go into the clip and continue to watch. Yes there is content to be made for limited instances and the challenges were thrown specifically to arenas, dungeons, and trials. But when it comes to overland content the ship has long sailed. Developing it isn’t worth it because the vast amount of the player base just will not engage with it that way.

This is why arenas, dungeons, and trials all have relatively easy normal modes and optional vet modes with hard modes and extra bosses. That is the limit to which they will make content difficult. Beyond that are achievements which isn’t the developer putting constraints on players but rather players doing it to themselves and the system taking notice.

You can’t do that for story content because story content can’t be repeated on the same toon. It’s one and done. And it doesn’t matter if you make overland harder as you’ll just negate that challenge by grouping.

Sorry but decades old data just isn't good enough justification why there should not be any changes or adjustments to existing and new content. Moreover, development cost and potential popularity is your personal opinion we both have no idea how much it is really cost or how popular it would be. But as long as half of released dlcs continue to cater to one group and another half to another there would always be complaints how one part is inaccessible and another trivially easy.

Frankly this comes across as rather ignorant of what Rich stated. The development teams knows the costs. They know the popularity. They know the statistics of what achievements are gotten, how many players have completed content, etc. That data is fed into tweaking builds, nerfing/buffing content, and it goes on.

They know exactly what’s going on in their game and are the authority on such, not the forum posters. Not only is the data they’re going off of not even a decade old but it’s live. It’s constantly fed into and clear trends are extrapolated. And amongst those trends I can tell you two things are very clear. One, hard overland content desire is so niche that it’s never going to happen again. And two, no one wants to play battlegrounds and the population has suffered significantly.

But if we ignore the data and listen to ppl in the forums we get situations like the present, where all BGs are now Deathmatches and while a small few are happy the rest of the population refuses to engage.

tonyblack

SilverBride wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

I have never heard anyone say that challenging content has no place in this game. But players need to find their challenges in the content that was developed specifically for this purpose, such as arenas, dungeons and trials, which is where Rich Lambert stated they are.

A lot of casual players like myself also enjoy challenges. I frequently fight World Bosses and run normal dungeons, and just recently have been testing myself in arenas. I have no interest in the moment in veteran versions of these but who knows, some day I may. But I do not want a challenge in every single thing I do, and when I do I know where to find them.

Running 4 man content requires 4 like-minded individuals online and often have to be scheduled in advance. Trials is always scheduled by guilds/discords with exception of rare random pickups. Running anything remotely competitive in pugs isn’t what I would call a fun experience so I ignore that option for most parts. So what even do in this game while waiting for these scheduled runs? We have 2 solo arenas and this is it. The moment I step in overland I instakill any quest mobs or bosses and world bosses or zone events spawn camped and not even remotely challenging. If major part of the game isn’t playable or enjoyable by anyone who even remotely invested in this game I see it as design flaw.

SilverBride

tonyblack wrote: »

Running 4 man content requires 4 like-minded individuals online and often have to be scheduled in advance...

...If major part of the game isn’t playable or enjoyable by anyone who even remotely invested in this game I see it as design flaw.

It does take some effort to form dungeon and trial groups, and some players may consider that a barrier, but that does not justify turning overland into end game content, optional or otherwise.

And overland is enjoyable for the majority of the playerbase just as it is.

tonyblack

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

[/i]

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1133028256?t=1h48m0s

If you are basing your entire argument on this one comment taken out of context which was in reference to creating specifically veteran only content like pre-One Tamriel, I think you are confused about what people are asking for in this thread.

People in that stream weren't asking Rich about a toggle for veteran/normal mode, they were asking for more content like pre-One Tamriel where you had zones that were veteran ONLY. This is a whole other conversation people have talked about on the forums, where many want that sense of progression like WoW had pre-scaling where zones have level ranges and you can over level or under level a zone. That sort of thing I agree, will never be added to ESO again.

However what I specifically would like to see is a TOGGLE, so you can play the overworld as it is now, or at the difficulty of old veteran versions of these zones, since all the work has already been done from before One Tamriel went live, and could easilly be copy-pasted to create versions for the modern zones.

I think this would satisfy both sides, and as I mentioned before it is a shame to just throw all that work away.

“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.”

“Would it be an option just to give people the choice? 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 then why do it? 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 2/3rds of the game was never played by players so we changed it.”

- Rich Lambert

How can you take this out of context? Yes it starts with pre-One Tamriel but it clearly carries over to present day content. Rich is being excessively clear that it’s not wanted by the majority of players nor were they doing it.

And as he stated about the players it can be said just the same for developers “Just making something more difficult for no reason, if you’re not going to get anything out of it then why do it?”. Why should they spend the time developing an additional system for challenges that involves a TON of work and most of their customers will ignore it or won’t do it?

There is no point in satisfying both sides because one side, the one pushing for harder difficulty toggles, has lost this battle. They were found to be in the minority and catering to them was a waste of time and resources. It’s not as if half the game wants a toggle and the other half doesn’t care. The data has clearly shown that’s not the case and that said content isn’t even attempted let alone repeated.

But if challenging content has no place in this game and isn’t profitable why are we getting 2 dlcs every year dedicated solely to veteran players and featuring mechanic heavy challenging fights? Developing and marketing dungeons require a lot of resources. Most casuals will ignore them, yet there is clearly a lot of people who buy and enjoy them.

Go into the clip and continue to watch. Yes there is content to be made for limited instances and the challenges were thrown specifically to arenas, dungeons, and trials. But when it comes to overland content the ship has long sailed. Developing it isn’t worth it because the vast amount of the player base just will not engage with it that way.

This is why arenas, dungeons, and trials all have relatively easy normal modes and optional vet modes with hard modes and extra bosses. That is the limit to which they will make content difficult. Beyond that are achievements which isn’t the developer putting constraints on players but rather players doing it to themselves and the system taking notice.

You can’t do that for story content because story content can’t be repeated on the same toon. It’s one and done. And it doesn’t matter if you make overland harder as you’ll just negate that challenge by grouping.

Sorry but decades old data just isn't good enough justification why there should not be any changes or adjustments to existing and new content. Moreover, development cost and potential popularity is your personal opinion we both have no idea how much it is really cost or how popular it would be. But as long as half of released dlcs continue to cater to one group and another half to another there would always be complaints how one part is inaccessible and another trivially easy.

Frankly this comes across as rather ignorant of what Rich stated. The development teams knows the costs. They know the popularity. They know the statistics of what achievements are gotten, how many players have completed content, etc. That data is fed into tweaking builds, nerfing/buffing content, and it goes on.

They know exactly what’s going on in their game and are the authority on such, not the forum posters. Not only is the data they’re going off of not even a decade old but it’s live. It’s constantly fed into and clear trends are extrapolated. And amongst those trends I can tell you two things are very clear. One, hard overland content desire is so niche that it’s never going to happen again. And two, no one wants to play battlegrounds and the population has suffered significantly.

But if we ignore the data and listen to ppl in the forums we get situations like the present, where all BGs are now Deathmatches and while a small few are happy the rest of the population refuses to engage.

The problem with your argument is that you sacredly believe and trying to convince the others that data which developers gather and analyze related to the matter at hand while evidence of what this data actually represent in nonexistent. Did it based on achievements, player participation, in game feedback? Did you see it personally or is it just an assumption? If anything related to veteran overland and questing requests are meaningless to them they are free to ignore these requests, forum is a form of feedback after all.

SilverBride

tonyblack wrote: »

...forum is a form of feedback after all.

Not highly accurate feedback when you factor in the small percentage of the playerbase who ever visit the forums. Or the posters who don't even play the game any more.

Sheezabeast

I would really hate their data to be off because of the number of bot accounts....

tonyblack

SilverBride wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

...forum is a form of feedback after all.

Not highly accurate feedback when you factor in the small percentage of the playerbase who ever visit the forums. Or the posters who don't even play the game any more.

Any constructive feedback is valuable to some extent and considering that similar requests are frequent not only on forums but on steam, reddit, twitch and discord I would say the issue affect more than small part of forum regulars.

Auztinito

I’ll take a more difficult overland when they remove the necessity of light attack weaving and hotbar flipping.

Honestly, they could provide more mechanics to fights or up the frequency/times the player will need to block/dodge/bash/ect.

While also, hard capping players to where they can’t steamroll. Lower the ceiling and leave the floor alone because if they do that. You’ll have more players participate in end-game content.

This would make the game much easier to balance and play around with more creative ideas for dungeons and ect.