No? By far the most common proposal for challenging overland is for a challenging overland option. No one wants to take away the existing easy mode.Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do.
Any effort spent on difficulty for content that most players play once and then do no revisit is wasted effort. Time should be spent improving repeatable content, like the myriad PVP issues, or end game dungeons/trials. Not for content that players are just going to burn through anyways, at whatever difficulty is picked.
Overland content, for the most part, is meant to be story driven, not combat driven.
To add as well, there are no meaningful changes they could make that would satisfy the tiny group of players who even want a change. That tiny group is broken into smaller subsets who can't even agree on what it is they want:
Difficulty slider? Well what should that slider do, scale mob health, damage, resistances? Or should they have more mechanics?
Scaling Health and such? Well, how is beating on a damage sponge any more difficult? Oh, that mob lives for 2 extra seconds against your vet trial ready DPS. Good job, I guess.
Changing enemy mechanics? So you basically want them to remake the entire game, redoing all enemy mechanics to suit some intangible level of difficulty, for a tiny subset of players? Why would any company ever make a decision to do something like this? The cost alone would be insane, and for what, players to burn through the quests anyways and never return, or never even engage with it in the first place.
What about a debuff food? Well, you can already choose not to equip your best gear, or eat food, or whatever you want to depower your character. But no one wants to do that because it breaks their progression or something. Why would a debuff food be any different.
How about a separate instance for solo quests? Again, a tiny subset of players. For content that is done once and then never returned to. It works for dungeons and trials and arenas because those are repeatable areas.
And I'll repeat, dev time is better spent on fixing PVP issues and making better dungeons and trials. Time should be spent on content that actually offers repeatable engagement.
I'll also add, there is a reason that new dungeons get nerfs after a few patches. The level of player engagement in the vet versions gets low enough that Zos has to make it easier in order to encourage participation. That alone is telling enough.
No? By far the most common proposal for challenging overland is for a challenging overland option. No one wants to take away the existing easy mode.Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do.
McTaterskins wrote: »Sort of unrelated but - I'd like to see a story mode in Dungeons.
I'm not even a huge PvE'er, but some of the stories, especially DLC ones, are pretty decent and I wouldn't mind having a sort of MA/VH experience in dungeons as well. Perhaps then gives a reason to have the companions?
Any effort spent on difficulty for content that most players play once and then do no revisit is wasted effort. Time should be spent improving repeatable content, like the myriad PVP issues, or end game dungeons/trials. Not for content that players are just going to burn through anyways, at whatever difficulty is picked.
Overland content, for the most part, is meant to be story driven, not combat driven.
To add as well, there are no meaningful changes they could make that would satisfy the tiny group of players who even want a change. That tiny group is broken into smaller subsets who can't even agree on what it is they want:
Difficulty slider? Well what should that slider do, scale mob health, damage, resistances? Or should they have more mechanics?
Scaling Health and such? Well, how is beating on a damage sponge any more difficult? Oh, that mob lives for 2 extra seconds against your vet trial ready DPS. Good job, I guess.
Changing enemy mechanics? So you basically want them to remake the entire game, redoing all enemy mechanics to suit some intangible level of difficulty, for a tiny subset of players? Why would any company ever make a decision to do something like this? The cost alone would be insane, and for what, players to burn through the quests anyways and never return, or never even engage with it in the first place.
What about a debuff food? Well, you can already choose not to equip your best gear, or eat food, or whatever you want to depower your character. But no one wants to do that because it breaks their progression or something. Why would a debuff food be any different.
How about a separate instance for solo quests? Again, a tiny subset of players. For content that is done once and then never returned to. It works for dungeons and trials and arenas because those are repeatable areas.
And I'll repeat, dev time is better spent on fixing PVP issues and making better dungeons and trials. Time should be spent on content that actually offers repeatable engagement.
I'll also add, there is a reason that new dungeons get nerfs after a few patches. The level of player engagement in the vet versions gets low enough that Zos has to make it easier in order to encourage participation. That alone is telling enough.
I disagree.
You may call it a "tiny group", but that does not make it one. This group may indeed be fractured but some of these ideas are clearly more feasible than others and it's not like the different subgroups would not all enjoy it if any of their suggestions was made into reality as they all agree on overworld being mind-numbingly easy.
As for development resources, well...
Using your own arguments, why is ZOS releasing new overland content at all if it can only be done once? Clearly because that content is valid too. And since that content is valid, it's understandable that veteran players want to play that new overland content as well. They might only play through a zone once, but there will be new zones coming out and I for one still haven't played through all the zones yet after 7 years of playing the game.
Also regarding the PvP issues and repeatable dungeons, those are different teams than the overland team. Resources are not being moved from one team to the other, meaning that while the PvP and performance team work on PvP and performance and while the dungeon team is making a new dungeon, the overland team can figure out how to improve overland difficulty to be inclusive for veterans and new players alike.
Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »Well options are always good, but you have to balance the amount of dev time needed for such an endeavor with the amount gained. In this instance I believe their time would be much better spent creating more map content than to cater to the more accomplished players. Even if the new content is easy out of the gate for them at least the overall player base will have more to do.
Edited for clarity.
Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »From the now locked thread, edited a bit for clarity.
To those wanting harder overland ask yourself this. Can you do overland even if it is to easy for you?
If your answer is yes, then good for you as you can complete the content albeit easily.
Remember though that some of us older and less fully abled cannot competently do trials, most (all?) DLC dungeons, arenas etc, even at the current difficulty.
So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do. As I have said in the past I quit games I can no longer play.
Tell me why I would pay for ESO+ or even bother playing ESO anymore if this were to happen?
spartaxoxo wrote: »Also here are some responses from Rich Lambert that I had compiled in another thread that I think are pertinent here.
On Vet Overland: [Source for both following responses]
"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."
“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”
“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”
“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”
On a Toggle:
"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.”
On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty [Source]
'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."
On what content players want to do (this was NOT said about Vet Overland, but instead was in an different interview where they asked him this question. While this response was never meant by him to address Vet Overland, I do think it's pertinent to know what is the vast majority of content that players engage in)[Source]
The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.