Overland Content Feedback Thread

SilverBride

BIackHand wrote: »

Im sure everyone in this thread knows already what Rich said, after you repeat it countless times. With the difference that he didn't get the feedback from the players themselves, but from the data in the game that shows who has quested and who not. And that changed drastic after people played through the content with their main characters and were too lazy to get more characters through it once again. Of course he said that to answer that question. Especially with no plan on that in the future. He also said fixing lag in cyrodiil for 7 years. so that's left undecided, but how convenient for you to cling to it xD

You cant prove that this experience is far from everyone. The only people i know are you and few others that i can count on one hand, have the opinion about overland content is to easy and nobody else. The the overwhelming majority had no problem with the dificulty itself.
The reason for the dislike, was to get all their classes/chars fast and easy to max level for the endgame, after they did it with their mainchars. And the Mainreason for the people against cadwells silver/gold were empty zones because of factions were instanced.

The data is way more accurate than the posts of the very small minority of the player base that participates on the forums.

There are many that play through the content again on their alts, which is evident by how upset we were that Account Wide Achievements removed our way of tracking individual character progress through the zone map.

You and I have very different perspectives and ways of playing and neither of us is right or wrong. It comes down to what is best for the game.

spartaxoxo

They did not just change their game based off data then or now. They actually collected feedback from a tons and tons of players back then and addressed all the most common paint points, including difficulty.

Agenericname

SilverBride wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

Im sure everyone in this thread knows already what Rich said, after you repeat it countless times. With the difference that he didn't get the feedback from the players themselves, but from the data in the game that shows who has quested and who not. And that changed drastic after people played through the content with their main characters and were too lazy to get more characters through it once again. Of course he said that to answer that question. Especially with no plan on that in the future. He also said fixing lag in cyrodiil for 7 years. so that's left undecided, but how convenient for you to cling to it xD

You cant prove that this experience is far from everyone. The only people i know are you and few others that i can count on one hand, have the opinion about overland content is to easy and nobody else. The the overwhelming majority had no problem with the dificulty itself.
The reason for the dislike, was to get all their classes/chars fast and easy to max level for the endgame, after they did it with their mainchars. And the Mainreason for the people against cadwells silver/gold were empty zones because of factions were instanced.

The data is way more accurate than the posts of the very small minority of the player base that participates on the forums.

There are many that play through the content again on their alts, which is evident by how upset we were that Account Wide Achievements removed our way of tracking individual character progress through the zone map.

You and I have very different perspectives and ways of playing and neither of us is right or wrong. It comes down to what is best for the game.

I believe the 2nd paragraph lessens the credibility of the first. If ZOS used their "data", why didnt they devise a better system rather than risk upsetting so many?

SilverBride

Agenericname wrote: »

I believe the 2nd paragraph lessens the credibility of the first. If ZOS used their "data", why didnt they devise a better system rather than risk upsetting so many?

There was no data for Account Wide Achievements because it had never been implemented before.

SilverBride

spartaxoxo wrote: »

They did not just change their game based off data then or now. They actually collected feedback from a tons and tons of players back then and addressed all the most common paint points, including difficulty.

And what they determined was that One Tamriel was the way to go, and now they have the data to back up that it was the right decision.

Agenericname

SilverBride wrote: »

Agenericname wrote: »

I believe the 2nd paragraph lessens the credibility of the first. If ZOS used their "data", why didnt they devise a better system rather than risk upsetting so many?

There was no data for Account Wide Achievements because it had never been implemented before.

True. There's also never been an overland when damage was as insanely high as it is now, or Ring of the Pale Order, hybrid builds with unlimited sustain, companions, or any of the other additions to the game that trivialized overland.

There's no data for either because the conditions are drastically different. Comparing the overland of the original Craglorn would be like comparing a drive to work in a Toyota Camry vs a horse drawn carraige from a century ago.

That a ZOS rep said this doesnt surprise me. I do feel like they try to make a game we enjoy. I feel like they do what they think is best. I also believe that they're fairly tone deaf as well, as is evident by the AwA implementation.

BIackHand

spartaxoxo wrote: »

They did not just change their game based off data then or now. They actually collected feedback from a tons and tons of players back then and addressed all the most common paint points, including difficulty.

The Majority of changes are based and the Data and ofc there is also a Forum where people give feedback. There is also a forum where people give feedback. I didn't realize we had to mention that specifically.
And the feedback in the Forum is for 95% negative. It is always the frightening majority of people in the corresponding topics wich complain about something, than the people wich are happy about how it was. People go less to the forum to say something is awesome instead complaing about something. I wouldn't take the forum that seriously either and thats why eso doesnt and looks more on the data.

spartaxoxo

BIackHand wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

They did not just change their game based off data then or now. They actually collected feedback from a tons and tons of players back then and addressed all the most common paint points, including difficulty.

The Majority of changes are based and the Data .

They use both. Feedback can help contextualize data. When you see the majority of feedback left on the forums is people hate the difficulty, you see 2/3rds of your game not being played, and see people actually avoiding fights..... it's pretty obvious what that all means. That the majority of players did not like the old difficulty.

That's just a fact. It's inconvenient fact to be sure but this game has actively sought and attracted a more casual playerbase. The majority do not like harder content and are fine with the current difficulty. We know this because they have the data and feedback that backs this up.

We can't expect them to do options that threatens that. We can expect them to give to at least some reasonable changes in scale that don't.

BIackHand

SilverBride wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

Im sure everyone in this thread knows already what Rich said, after you repeat it countless times. With the difference that he didn't get the feedback from the players themselves, but from the data in the game that shows who has quested and who not. And that changed drastic after people played through the content with their main characters and were too lazy to get more characters through it once again. Of course he said that to answer that question. Especially with no plan on that in the future. He also said fixing lag in cyrodiil for 7 years. so that's left undecided, but how convenient for you to cling to it xD

You cant prove that this experience is far from everyone. The only people i know are you and few others that i can count on one hand, have the opinion about overland content is to easy and nobody else. The the overwhelming majority had no problem with the dificulty itself.
The reason for the dislike, was to get all their classes/chars fast and easy to max level for the endgame, after they did it with their mainchars. And the Mainreason for the people against cadwells silver/gold were empty zones because of factions were instanced.

The data is way more accurate than the posts of the very small minority of the player base that participates on the forums.

There are many that play through the content again on their alts, which is evident by how upset we were that Account Wide Achievements removed our way of tracking individual character progress through the zone map.

You and I have very different perspectives and ways of playing and neither of us is right or wrong. It comes down to what is best for the game.

Nice that we have the same opinion, about how ZOS values feedback from the data over feedback from the forums

I can't really see the connection between the topic and this answer, mainly because accouuntue successes is a completely different topic and doesn't belong here.

yes, our perspectives are as different as they could be. with the difference that I follow what people really thought about the downtuned difficulty and what the reason for the people was to complain about cadwells silver/gold, while you keep repeating over and your line about what rich said.

BIackHand

spartaxoxo wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

They did not just change their game based off data then or now. They actually collected feedback from a tons and tons of players back then and addressed all the most common paint points, including difficulty.

The Majority of changes are based and the Data .

They use both. Feedback can help contextualize data. When you see the majority of feedback left on the forums is people hate the difficulty, you see 2/3rds of your game not being played, and see people actually avoiding fights..... it's pretty obvious what that all means. That the majority of players did not like the old difficulty.

That's just a fact. It's inconvenient fact to be sure but this game has actively sought and attracted a more casual playerbase. The majority do not like harder content and are fine with the current difficulty. We know this because they have the data and feedback that backs this up.

We can't expect them to do options that threatens that. We can expect them to give to at least some reasonable changes in scale that don't.

Ofc they need to use both, especially when people cant stop complain in the forums. But they value the data more, because obviously peoples in the forum is to 95% negative how i pointed it out already.
And the biggest fact is that people complained about it was the empty overland zones, wich reason was the instances between alliances. The second biggest fact was that they disliked the difficulty because they are to lazy to do Cadwells Silver/Gold with more chars, than only with their mains and i have actually the same opinion, because it was an amazing, but also hard and exhausting journey. But now its a extremly dry easy journey you just wanna get over it and let it behind and forgotten or just go to a grinding spot and get to max lvl as fast as possible to have fun in the endgame.

SilverBride

BIackHand wrote: »

Nice that we have the same opinion, about how ZOS values feedback from the data over feedback from the forums

I never once said that ZoS values data more than feedback from players. As @spartaxoxo pointed out "They use both. Feedback can help contextualize data. When you see the majority of feedback left on the forums is people hate the difficulty, you see 2/3rds of your game not being played, and see people actually avoiding fights..... it's pretty obvious what that all means. That the majority of players did not like the old difficulty."

Feedback is subjective whereas data is concrete evidence, and that has to be taken into account.

BIackHand wrote: »

yes, our perspectives are as different as they could be. with the difference that I follow what people really thought about the downtuned difficulty and what the reason for the people was to complain about cadwells silver/gold, while you keep repeating over and your line about what rich said.

I have shared my own personal experience that Cadwell's Silver and Gold were too hard to be enjoyable and many others agreed. I quote Rich because his statement keeps being refuted, but he has the data to back it up.

BIackHand

SilverBride wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

Nice that we have the same opinion, about how ZOS values feedback from the data over feedback from the forums

I never once said that ZoS values data more than feedback from players. As @spartaxoxo pointed out "They use both. Feedback can help contextualize data. When you see the majority of feedback left on the forums is people hate the difficulty, you see 2/3rds of your game not being played, and see people actually avoiding fights..... it's pretty obvious what that all means. That the majority of players did not like the old difficulty."

Feedback is subjective whereas data is concrete evidence, and that has to be taken into account.

BIackHand wrote: »

yes, our perspectives are as different as they could be. with the difference that I follow what people really thought about the downtuned difficulty and what the reason for the people was to complain about cadwells silver/gold, while you keep repeating over and your line about what rich said.

I have shared my own personal experience that Cadwell's Silver and Gold were too hard to be enjoyable and many others agreed. I quote Rich because his statement keeps being refuted, but he has the data to back it up.

People didnt hate the difficulty itself. People hated it to go through the whole content "again'' with all their chars, with the aim for just max lvl, after they enjoyed the content once already on their main chars. The other People hated the empty cadwell silver/gold overland zones, because its instances between alliances. And thats the Data Rich got to back him up. And thats what the majority of whiners complained about and nothing else. You and the ''many people'' you like to describe it every time are the little minority wich didnt enjoy the experience at all. Still the Majority did enjoy it, the first time.

The solution was one Tamriel, removal of instances and one easy LvL of difficulty for all, to get faster to max lvl with their twinks. since enemy LvL in cadwells silver was higher than Faction overland and gold was higher than silver. And for the little minority of people like you for example complained about the difficulty, beeing to hard to complete quests at all, they turned down difficulty even further, ignoring the option to let people get help from other people like its used to be in an online game.

Nowadays the only company in overland content you can get is a zerg of 25 people wich dont wanna know anything from each other and grind dolmens and dragons with maximum efficiency to get maximum lvl. Or solo questing only experiencing the lore and whatch netflix on second screen while fighting overland, wich difficulty isnt in need of more attention. And of course staying somewhere and do some roleplay. Without joining a discord or a guild people dont rly socialize from only open world, because nobody needs anyone.

The thing is, cadwells silver/gold wasnt way harder than TES:skyrim/oblivion on easy difficulty xDD. A bit easier than that would be fine, but ZOS got a talent to strongly overnerf things. Good example is the high isle patchnode nerf of the set ''draugrkin's grip''. Nobody with decent understanding of the game will ever use it anymore. The overland difficulty right now is insanly easy. When for example ZOS would implement overland difficultys, where we can chose between Hard, Medium, Easy, then they have to introduce a difficulty named ''Legendary Easy'' or ''AFK Pornhub Easy'' to match the experience like it is right now in eso overland.

Not beeing able to do a half rotation on the enemy with even extremly bad gear. Its more challenging to tip over an empty bucket. Wich leads to the insanly bad trasittion point from overland to veteran content. I see geared people on max LvL do 10 times less dps than average decent people wich are used to veteran content and play the game for many years and thats understandable because the overland content doesnt require more than that, because the difficulty stays even the same on lvl 50 like in lvl 1.

[snip]

[Edit for Spam.]

SilverBride

BIackHand wrote: »

People didnt hate the difficulty itself. People hated it to go through the whole content "again'' with all their chars, with the aim for just max lvl, after they enjoyed the content once already on their main chars. The other People hated the empty cadwell silver/gold overland zones, because its instances between alliances. And thats the Data Rich got to back him up. And thats what the majority of whiners complained about and nothing else. You and the ''many people'' you like to describe it every time are the little minority wich didnt enjoy the experience at all. Still the Majority did enjoy it, the first time.

A lot of players hated the difficulty as Rich said in his Twitch stream from a few months ago.

"Can we get a vet mode for delves and quests? Uh, so we had that ... at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out. We put the challenge into World Bosses, and into solo Arenas, and into Dungeons and Trials.

People didn't do it because they had to go through their own alliance first? That's not actually true. A ton of people completed their own alliance storylines to get to silver and gold. A ton of people did. People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff.

I get 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."

CP5

SilverBride wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

People didnt hate the difficulty itself. People hated it to go through the whole content "again'' with all their chars, with the aim for just max lvl, after they enjoyed the content once already on their main chars. The other People hated the empty cadwell silver/gold overland zones, because its instances between alliances. And thats the Data Rich got to back him up. And thats what the majority of whiners complained about and nothing else. You and the ''many people'' you like to describe it every time are the little minority wich didnt enjoy the experience at all. Still the Majority did enjoy it, the first time.

A lot of players hated the difficulty as Rich said in his Twitch stream from a few months ago.

"Can we get a vet mode for delves and quests? Uh, so we had that ... at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out. We put the challenge into World Bosses, and into solo Arenas, and into Dungeons and Trials.

People didn't do it because they had to go through their own alliance first? That's not actually true. A ton of people completed their own alliance storylines to get to silver and gold. A ton of people did. People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff.

I get 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."

Rich's answer to the interview also was exactly the same as this quote you love to share, indicating that he either has ignored the feedback here, hence why he thinks we're still asking for the old content to be reinstated, or that they genuinely don't understand what people are asking for despite all the answers here. Again, during that interview he did clearly state that they do want players to have more ways to interact with the world, hence why he wasn't concerned with players stepping out of the main overland loop to enjoy the game. His own quotes now also support this option, because if they aren't worried about this card game diverting players from overland, and instead welcome it as another way for players to enjoy the game world, why not here?

"I have shared my own personal experience that current overland is too easy to be enjoyable and many others agreed. I quote Rich because his statement keeps being refuted, but he has the data to back it up."

It is exactly the same problem that ruined your enjoyment of the game, and I will continue to stand by the fact that leaving such an issue in the game, and ignoring the impact that it has on players, is bad for the long term health of the game for everyone.

BIackHand

SilverBride wrote: »

BIackHand wrote: »

People didnt hate the difficulty itself. People hated it to go through the whole content "again'' with all their chars, with the aim for just max lvl, after they enjoyed the content once already on their main chars. The other People hated the empty cadwell silver/gold overland zones, because its instances between alliances. And thats the Data Rich got to back him up. And thats what the majority of whiners complained about and nothing else. You and the ''many people'' you like to describe it every time are the little minority wich didnt enjoy the experience at all. Still the Majority did enjoy it, the first time.

A lot of players hated the difficulty as Rich said in his Twitch stream from a few months ago.

"Can we get a vet mode for delves and quests? Uh, so we had that ... at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out. We put the challenge into World Bosses, and into solo Arenas, and into Dungeons and Trials.

People didn't do it because they had to go through their own alliance first? That's not actually true. A ton of people completed their own alliance storylines to get to silver and gold. A ton of people did. People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff.

I get 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."

Its always funny how you still quote Rich Lambert. Feel free to continue to Chain quote him instead of developing your own thoughts, but we know what lambert wrote about this.

Rich Lambert here is talking about the extra difficulty of cadwells silver and gold.
But the difficulty of the own faction questline was even way way higher than the overland content right now. If we still would have the difficulty we had 2014 even in the own faction before cadwells silver/gold this thread wouldnt exist. Difficulty of cadwells silver/gold isnt even needed ROFL. But i would appreciate atleast the original own faction difficulty, becaue it was totally enough to enjoy the questline. Kek

Alone the Molag Bal Fight of the ''Own Faction Questline'' wasnt even close as easy to what it is nowadays.
It is a joke of a boss. After killing Molag Bal, the daedric prince of destruction, domination, corruption and what not, you are just left completly disappointed. He got a glass chin and hits like a wet noodle...

Its funny how Rich Lambert said that cadwells silver and gold was just for the Story. But the truth is it was still a part of the Lvling process, nessecary to reach the highest veteran level to get into highest endgame. What he also didnt mention is that people already got decked out with gearsets wich made cadwells silver/gold close to the niveau of own faction difficulty. People also evolved their gameplay in own faction questline and were prepared for cadwells silver. And he also didnt mention that a ''HUGE'' part of the ''HUGE'' portion of people in the forum complained about empty zones, about that they dont wanna go ''again'' through the difficulty to Lvl their other classes. At this point it would be to much for them, because it would took again an immense of time.

And to appeal to the ''HUGE'' part of people complained in the Forum, wich Rich Lambert is reffering to. I repeat it again. The feedback in the Forum is for 95% negative. It is always the frightening majority of people in the corresponding topics wich complain about something, than the people wich are happy about how it was. People go less to the forum to say something is awesome instead complaing about something. If the portion of people wich were happy with it, would have gone to the forum to say how nice it was, we still would have silver and gold, but i think even with equal participation in the forum the majority would still criticize instances between faction because empty zones, it was very bad.

In contrast to the people who liked the difficulty in connection with the story, the people complained specific about dont beeing able to complete quests at all or had big issues was a small part. The biggest part was because of the empty instanced zones and the other part was that they were to lazy to do it again for their other classes.
which means they did enjoy it the first time, because it was very engaging, they evolved their gameplay and gear setups for the next steps, with an existing transittion point to the veteran content, grouped up with people and had fun. an overall healthy quest experience. The opposite what it is right now.

[snip]

[Edit for Spam.]

spartaxoxo

...

...yet it was very painful and exhausting. It was not fun at all. It's no wonder people hated the VR content because it was far more difficult and unenjoyable than any game should be.

People DID hate the difficulty itself. This kind of feedback was very common and they explicitly stated it was one reason for the change.

Again they took player feedback AND data to make these decisions. When explaining how they did One Tamriel.

"Obviously, there was a ton of feedback from the PC launch," Elder Scrolls Online game director Matt Firor tells USG. "That was the core of what we then used over the next year to make changes in the game. Even during that period, there was a pretty large group of people that were playing the game every day and a lot of the changes that we made were just as much looking at what those players were doing. That and the player feedback is what we used to create the roadmap that went all the way through One Tamriel."

Later in interview when asked about difficulty.

Balance is obviously a tricky thing. What is too easy for one player is impossible for another," he tells us. "We try to balance so that the average player can have a good experience, especially with the main story content. That's our critical path. If they want to challenge themselves, they can go and do Public Dungeons, or Trials with 12 of their friends. We do make that conscious choice with the crit path to make it playable for as many people as possible."

"As for the extra difficulty, that's something our playerbase has talked about for a long time. A lot of our original players forget that we had that with [Cadwell's Gold and Silver] way back when. The feedback that we got about that was they didn't like it. It wasn't fun. The extra difficulty wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to enjoy the story. It's a catch-22.

BIackHand

spartaxoxo wrote: »

...

...yet it was very painful and exhausting. It was not fun at all. It's no wonder people hated the VR content because it was far more difficult and unenjoyable than any game should be.

People DID hate the difficulty itself. This kind of feedback was very common and they explicitly stated it was one reason for the change.

Again they took player feedback AND data to make these decisions. When explaining how they did One Tamriel.

"Obviously, there was a ton of feedback from the PC launch," Elder Scrolls Online game director Matt Firor tells USG. "That was the core of what we then used over the next year to make changes in the game. Even during that period, there was a pretty large group of people that were playing the game every day and a lot of the changes that we made were just as much looking at what those players were doing. That and the player feedback is what we used to create the roadmap that went all the way through One Tamriel."

Later in interview when asked about difficulty.

Balance is obviously a tricky thing. What is too easy for one player is impossible for another," he tells us. "We try to balance so that the average player can have a good experience, especially with the main story content. That's our critical path. If they want to challenge themselves, they can go and do Public Dungeons, or Trials with 12 of their friends. We do make that conscious choice with the crit path to make it playable for as many people as possible."

"As for the extra difficulty, that's something our playerbase has talked about for a long time. A lot of our original players forget that we had that with [Cadwell's Gold and Silver] way back when. The feedback that we got about that was they didn't like it. It wasn't fun. The extra difficulty wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to enjoy the story. It's a catch-22.

I can live with that. But all this only applies to cadwell's silver and gold. And i am actually fine if its to hard for people. But Own Faction Questline wasnt as hard Cadwells Silver/Gold was, but it was challenging enough. According to Silverbride's Lambert quote, where he answers to the following question(I want to get to the second question, but i posted both to give you better context):

Can we get a vet mode for delves and quests? Uh, so we had that ... at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out. We put the challenge into World Bosses, and into solo Arenas, and into Dungeons and Trials.

People didn't do it because they had to go through their own alliance first? That's not actually true. A ton of people completed their own alliance storylines to get to silver and gold. A ton of people did. People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff.

As is said before, that i am fine without Cadwells Silver/Gold difficulty got removed. Wich people complained about. But im not fine with the fact that they even turned everything below Own Faction Difficulty, what nobody asked for. ZOS just overnerfed everything without sensitivity. Same like they do with strong sets, wich are now beyond useless(for example Draugrkin's Grip, High Isle nerf) and nobody comes close to using them again. At least not with common sense. And its the same with Overland content now. Its so boring. No wonder the most people prefer a Dolmen zerg over the questline.

[snip]

[Edit for Spam.]

Hexnibbler

I made an Orsimer Sorcerer. Named him "Gruk The Challenged".
I don't use weapon. Bare fists. Nor armors. Or skill points. Or skills. Or Stats. Or anything.
So I go around, punching mobs in the face with light attacks, blocking theirs.
And it works. It works surprinsingly well.

I hear Rocky's theme song in my head when I punch my way through "sneaking" missions. Gruk doesn't sneak.
When there are traps to avoid, I run through them. Gruk doesn't avoid.

I one shot wolves "adds" (the ones spawning from the "Howling" attack) with a single light attack of my mighty fists.
I killed the "bone dude" boss in the first Molag Bal quest with my fists too. It's labelled as "hard". Gruk is harder.
New players seeing me playing try to "E" me because they think Gruk is an NPC in their quest.

The best challenge I had was a fight against 3 mobs. Nearly depleted my stamina bar and lost 1/4 of my health.

I'm now level 10, way past the tutorial phase and still "Rocking".
Can't wait to strangle Mannimarco with my hands.

Even I, who is actually doing it myself and witnessing it firsthand, am under the impression that this description above is a huge trolling exageration of the truth when writing it.
And it is not.

Gruk doesn't exagerate.

Althought It's a bit of a provocative post from my part, It is factual. Anyone can check it in his own account. There is no interpretation about it.

I certainly will have to put some of those level up point in stamina or health at some points in Gruk's improbable story. I can see that my light attacking fists are now dealing below 2K damage, and the the mobs attacks are going above 1k unblocked. So maybe in a few level I will need to put a few points. Or wear equipement.

What matters in that experiment is that the game current balance isn't about being too easy, because this Gruk way of life isn't even hard (try it ! don't just imagine or judge, try it.).

Can't say that it is hard to right click while a mob attack and left click twice after that. (hint: they attack, then they idle so you can attack. then they attack. Sometimes instead of idling they charge a telegraph)
A telegraph that lasts between 1 to more than 2 seconds,
meaning you have between 500ms up to 1500 ms to react on a 500 ping connection.
Human reaction is 200 to 250ms.
So someone would need to be two time slower than what is scientifically measured to be the average of human reaction to be physically unable to meet the required motor skills to play this game on an internet connection that has a 500 ms delay in the very worst case scenario of a 1 sec telegraph that can still be anticipated through watching the mob....

No, this is not about difficulty or accessibiility.

The game current balance is allowing players to just randomly place points and randomly use skills and gear so that they cannot, mathematically, put themselves in a situation where the combat can be lost unless there are many concurrent mobs.
Again, this is pure facts : You still win fights without any equipement (armor AND weapons), without any points in any skills, without any "attribute allocation" and just spam light attack in the face of monsters at level 10. And without blocking or dodging any of his attacks including the heavy ones. So, if you can still beat it that way, you can certainly beat it with uninformed or very bad allocations.

You start to need "block" against "Hard" monsters such as boss (purple healthbar) :




I'll take note of the level at which it becomes necessary to use armor and/or weapon to win this way. And how long the game (not "me" : the game.) allow to win this way onward.

So while it's all fun to try to decipher the will and intent of a majority of player across differents cultures, ages, countries and equipements, we can go the other way around and try to understand if it is likely that the majority of players consider the current state of balance preferable.

If it does it would imply that the majority of players are asking to protect the rocky balboa gameplay where mobs are simply loot container of the exact same nature as resources nodes at the expense of a normal fantasy mmorpg gameplay that includes weapons, skills, armor, stats, etc to win fights overland.

I don't belive so.

What the current balance allow is, as far as overland content is concerned, for people to wipe entire delves without stopping, blocking, dodging or interrupting while spamming skills. So much that in most cases when you have to go through a delve because of a quest you won't have to fight 90% of its content because someone else has already wiped it.

This is again a factual description of what is happening in game.

What probably happend, If I need to guess, is that some people had difficulty with the game -maybe- because as usual when stats are meaningful in a mmorpg, some people just don't know how to use the system to keep their character in-line with the game expectations.

So their mistakes in allocating points makes the game more challenging as they progress in level (in the sense that it makes the amount of hits to win higher and/or the amount of mistakes required to lose lower).
It's a classic issue in mmorpgs.
Those who knows "how to", and don't need less difficulty, makes the game easier for themselves.
Those who don't know "how to", and don't need more difficulty, makes the game harder for themselves.

Just as if they were playing Gruk without knowing they can put a weapon, attribute point and armor in those slots, they play and at some point it becomes too difficult. Just my guess.

Keeping the balance as it is right now is the equivalent of saying "ok Gruk is a valid gameplay." over "Ok we need to help people put their points and understand the game mechanics so that they don't end up in a situation where the game becomes too challenging or impossible".

Even IF somehow this radically change above level 35+ (that's my highest character, who is a normal character) it still is the experience new players go through and that is what they will judge the game to be.
Saying if they want challenge they should go towards hard level content is the exact same thing as saying to those who felt the game was too hard should have limit themselves to mudcrab farming.
I don't find either of those to be relevant answers, and frankly it isn't respectful either.

The goal of my post here is to show some undisputable facts alongside what simply is my opinion.
And just to anticipate : my opinion is not shared to be changed or marginalized through forum quote wars, and facts are facts.

If ZOS wants the game to stay this way that's under their responsability.
At the end of the day it is a commercial product so if it leads to more customers rather than less then it's a good thing for them.
But I would be surprised that the retention rate of new players is better this way than it would be with a serious balancing pass.

JobooAGS

At this point, I would not be against the idea of removing battle spirit and simultaneously halfing all skill tooltips effectively having battle spirit be for everyone everywhere. Dps overall skyrocketed in the past 4 or so years and this seeps into trivializing overland

BIackHand

JobooAGS wrote: »

At this point, I would not be against the idea of removing battle spirit and simultaneously halfing all skill tooltips effectively having battle spirit be for everyone everywhere. Dps overall skyrocketed in the past 4 or so years and this seeps into trivializing overland

The problem of extremly easy overland content existed already long time before the skyrocked dps. Right after one tamriel hit, from one moment to another, you were able to kill all overland content naked, with white quality weapons. Except worldbosses, but every other questboss, dungeonboss, public dungeon boss without much effort.

Arunei

@Blackhand
You can't get on someone's case for quoting what the main guy running the game has said about their stance on difficulty and then keep posting the same video about a subjective thing like difficulty. It's also funny how you claim the people who didn't like the difficulty back then were just complaining and in the minority, when Rich and the others have data to clearly show the opposite.

It's fine if you want harder overland but don't try to trivialize what the main guy overseeing the game, who has access to data you don't, has said as recently as a few months ago because it doesn't line up with the answer you want.

BIackHand

Arunei wrote: »

@Blackhand
You can't get on someone's case for quoting what the main guy running the game has said about their stance on difficulty and then keep posting the same video about a subjective thing like difficulty. It's also funny how you claim the people who didn't like the difficulty back then were just complaining and in the minority, when Rich and the others have data to clearly show the opposite.

It's fine if you want harder overland but don't try to trivialize what the main guy overseeing the game, who has access to data you don't, has said as recently as a few months ago because it doesn't line up with the answer you want.

Ofc i can keep posting the Video, because i dont post it as an answer to whoevers post or quote. I keep posting the same Video with the intention that as many people as possible who stumble across this thread, can watch it and say something about it aswell, because we have clearly more people in this thread, wich want harder overland content aswell, than the opposite camp. The more, the better. Like it or not. The longer this thread keeps going with people wich wanna have a challenge in the overland, the better.

My claim is based on my experience and what i remember from back in the days and what i have seen in the Forums and what i listen from other people about this topic. Well he got the Data, but i know what was happening in the forums. I noticed a lot about people disliked cadwells silver/gold, but mostly about empty zones resulted from instances between faction, the struggle of LvLing twinks again through that whole process, but in comparison to that not so much about the difficult itself. Everywhere when i get into this topic, the overwhelming majority of people dislike the extremly overnerfed difficulty. Same like in this thread.
And since they promise us to fix the performance in Cyrodiil since 7 Years, while nothing has changed, there is no trust anymore about what they say about data's, because at some point im asking myself: is he talking the truth or is he just defending himself, while trying to shut people up to sweep the problem under the table. And i am by far not alone with that. And its the same with the Serverrearchitecture of the game, to solve performance issues for many people. For my part i am looking forward to that. I waited 7 years and i am optimistic to wait another year. Incase nothing changes... Well then it is like it is. I guess Eso would lose its whole charme without lag issues and bugs. joke

Even if 100% of people in the game only complained about difficulty of cadwells silver/gold. It doesnt justify that they nerfed the difficulty even below own Faction Content. According to Lamberts ''Data'' people played own faction content difficulty until cadwells Silver/gold without complaining, so why the hell they nerfed that into the oblivion aswell?

Thanks to ''Hexnibbler'' who posted on this page and shows a very good example of how the real absurd difficulty of overland content is now a days.

[snip]

[Edit for Spam.]

spartaxoxo

I mean the person you have to convince is Rich , alongside the rest of the staff. They are ultimately the ones that can make changes.

FlopsyPrince

Sylvermynx wrote: »

@Vulkunne - you'll probably laugh at me.... I have 7 CP 160 characters. I have 53 lower level alts. Guess what I play most?

Yeah, the 53 alts from level 10 to level 38....

That is only a temporary situation. Keeping players low level is quite hard if you play them.

I went from 0 PC characters (NA and EU) a year ago to 16 CP160 on NA and 2 CP160 and 5 lower on EU today. The EU ones will be CP160 soon. All would be, but I made more alts there than I thought I would.

FlopsyPrince

It is pretty clear (at least to me from what I have read) that they implemented Account-wide Achievements as they did because of internal development/optimization needs, not a demand for what happened. Many of us wanted AWA, but not quite what we got.

They have made some posts about how this should speed up database access and such, so that seems like a likely driver. I don't blame them for that BTW.

Also keep in mind that "player surveys" are notoriously uncertain. Those who respond are not necessarily most players, just motivated ones.

I still have not seen anyone in favor of massive overhauls in vet overland content explain how it would really keep them satisfied for long. Examples of "hard content" now get swept away and discounted, but those haven't held the interest of too many.

I remember playing WoW years ago and discovering the open Horde area (as Alliance) where I could freely ride with not much around. That was great at the time, but I didn't go back there later as it was now old to me and not compelling at all. I would see much veteran overland as in the same plate. It would require far more than just minor changes to tune across the world and then only keep some busy for a while.

That is the problem with all MMO content. Keeping players satisfied is a much harder problem than many realize and has been discussed for years (outside of ESO).

WiseSky

Hexnibbler wrote: »

I made an Orsimer Sorcerer. Named him "Gruk The Challenged".
I don't use weapon. Bare fists. Nor armors. Or skill points. Or skills. Or Stats. Or anything.
So I go around, punching mobs in the face with light attacks, blocking theirs.
And it works. It works surprinsingly well.

I hear Rocky's theme song in my head when I punch my way through "sneaking" missions. Gruk doesn't sneak.
When there are traps to avoid, I run through them. Gruk doesn't avoid.

I one shot wolves "adds" (the ones spawning from the "Howling" attack) with a single light attack of my mighty fists.
I killed the "bone dude" boss in the first Molag Bal quest with my fists too. It's labelled as "hard". Gruk is harder.
New players seeing me playing try to "E" me because they think Gruk is an NPC in their quest.

The best challenge I had was a fight against 3 mobs. Nearly depleted my stamina bar and lost 1/4 of my health.

I'm now level 10, way past the tutorial phase and still "Rocking".
Can't wait to strangle Mannimarco with my hands.

Even I, who is actually doing it myself and witnessing it firsthand, am under the impression that this description above is a huge trolling exageration of the truth when writing it.
And it is not.

Gruk doesn't exagerate.

Althought It's a bit of a provocative post from my part, It is factual. Anyone can check it in his own account. There is no interpretation about it.

I certainly will have to put some of those level up point in stamina or health at some points in Gruk's improbable story. I can see that my light attacking fists are now dealing below 2K damage, and the the mobs attacks are going above 1k unblocked. So maybe in a few level I will need to put a few points. Or wear equipement.

What matters in that experiment is that the game current balance isn't about being too easy, because this Gruk way of life isn't even hard (try it ! don't just imagine or judge, try it.).

Can't say that it is hard to right click while a mob attack and left click twice after that. (hint: they attack, then they idle so you can attack. then they attack. Sometimes instead of idling they charge a telegraph)
A telegraph that lasts between 1 to more than 2 seconds,
meaning you have between 500ms up to 1500 ms to react on a 500 ping connection.
Human reaction is 200 to 250ms.
So someone would need to be two time slower than what is scientifically measured to be the average of human reaction to be physically unable to meet the required motor skills to play this game on an internet connection that has a 500 ms delay in the very worst case scenario of a 1 sec telegraph that can still be anticipated through watching the mob....

No, this is not about difficulty or accessibiility.

The game current balance is allowing players to just randomly place points and randomly use skills and gear so that they cannot, mathematically, put themselves in a situation where the combat can be lost unless there are many concurrent mobs.
Again, this is pure facts : You still win fights without any equipement (armor AND weapons), without any points in any skills, without any "attribute allocation" and just spam light attack in the face of monsters at level 10. And without blocking or dodging any of his attacks including the heavy ones. So, if you can still beat it that way, you can certainly beat it with uninformed or very bad allocations.

You start to need "block" against "Hard" monsters such as boss (purple healthbar) :




I'll take note of the level at which it becomes necessary to use armor and/or weapon to win this way. And how long the game (not "me" : the game.) allow to win this way onward.

So while it's all fun to try to decipher the will and intent of a majority of player across differents cultures, ages, countries and equipements, we can go the other way around and try to understand if it is likely that the majority of players consider the current state of balance preferable.

If it does it would imply that the majority of players are asking to protect the rocky balboa gameplay where mobs are simply loot container of the exact same nature as resources nodes at the expense of a normal fantasy mmorpg gameplay that includes weapons, skills, armor, stats, etc to win fights overland.

I don't belive so.

What the current balance allow is, as far as overland content is concerned, for people to wipe entire delves without stopping, blocking, dodging or interrupting while spamming skills. So much that in most cases when you have to go through a delve because of a quest you won't have to fight 90% of its content because someone else has already wiped it.

This is again a factual description of what is happening in game.

What probably happend, If I need to guess, is that some people had difficulty with the game -maybe- because as usual when stats are meaningful in a mmorpg, some people just don't know how to use the system to keep their character in-line with the game expectations.

So their mistakes in allocating points makes the game more challenging as they progress in level (in the sense that it makes the amount of hits to win higher and/or the amount of mistakes required to lose lower).
It's a classic issue in mmorpgs.
Those who knows "how to", and don't need less difficulty, makes the game easier for themselves.
Those who don't know "how to", and don't need more difficulty, makes the game harder for themselves.

Just as if they were playing Gruk without knowing they can put a weapon, attribute point and armor in those slots, they play and at some point it becomes too difficult. Just my guess.

Keeping the balance as it is right now is the equivalent of saying "ok Gruk is a valid gameplay." over "Ok we need to help people put their points and understand the game mechanics so that they don't end up in a situation where the game becomes too challenging or impossible".

Even IF somehow this radically change above level 35+ (that's my highest character, who is a normal character) it still is the experience new players go through and that is what they will judge the game to be.
Saying if they want challenge they should go towards hard level content is the exact same thing as saying to those who felt the game was too hard should have limit themselves to mudcrab farming.
I don't find either of those to be relevant answers, and frankly it isn't respectful either.

The goal of my post here is to show some undisputable facts alongside what simply is my opinion.
And just to anticipate : my opinion is not shared to be changed or marginalized through forum quote wars, and facts are facts.

If ZOS wants the game to stay this way that's under their responsability.
At the end of the day it is a commercial product so if it leads to more customers rather than less then it's a good thing for them.
But I would be surprised that the retention rate of new players is better this way than it would be with a serious balancing pass.

Lovely play style.

I for one have my own challenging way to playing.

If you are CP 160 with no armor and skills and no Cp you will die to Mudcrab just punching them cause of the level scaling just wanted to chime that in. But at level 10 its fine

LashanW

WiseSky wrote: »

If you are CP 160 with no armor and skills and no Cp you will die to Mudcrab just punching them cause of the level scaling just wanted to chime that in.

Nope.
I checked with my Redguard nightblade (CP2493).
Loaded an empty build from armory.
No skills/passives, no armor/jewels, no weapons, no CP, no attribute points. And no buff food. Still had the mundus, I don't know how to take it off. (right clicking on character screen didn't remove it) and ofc no potions or poisons. It's kinda weird but you can equip poisons without any weapons. Guess my dude just dips his bare hands in poison.

Punched a mudcrab to death (can't take on more than 1 tho)

Felt extra brave. So punched a bear to death too. This was fun actually, much more interesting than the boring mudcrab.

In both cases I had 35% or more health left. But you have to follow the basic combat stuff like blocking heavy attacks and moving out of red AoE (bear has a conal attack). Rest of the time I just held down the attack button (which results in a heavy attack spam)

SilverBride

I don't disagree that overland trash mobs are easy. I disagree that this is a bad thing.

Overland is for the story, not for a challenge. No one should have to struggle with these mobs and as it is now they don't have to.

DagenHawk

Here is the thing...

I don't have a dog in the race....heck I play Mortal II and all the Dark Souls games, but it seems to me that a significant number of folks who want harder difficulty want it just to *** off those who don't.

How many times have we seen... "Then they would have to work for it!" like some Dad who is mad because his teenaged son won't get a job.

I mean really?

I know everyone who is for harder content will deny it now but go back and look...it's pretty obvious.

My point is I think the devs have already figured this one out...yes they will let us vent and debate ad nauseum, but it's never happening. it's never happening because the devs know that when that one guy hits the forums with his "deal with it casuals" victory lap all hell will break loose.

No matter what rationalization you have you know I'm right.

You may all go back to the endless debate now.

Snamyap

SilverBride wrote: »

Overland is for the story, not for a challenge. No one should have to struggle with these mobs and as it is now they don't have to.

How good would the story of Lord of the Rings be if the fellowship could just mow down the goblins and the troll in Moria? If Gandalf was done with the Balrog in 10 seconds? If Sam didn't need to rescue Frodo from Shelob because she was never a threat to begin with?