Overland Content Feedback Thread

TaSheen

Elsonso wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, wanted to follow up here. We don't have any changes to announce at this time for Overland Difficulty. Rich's last statement is the current stance. But we wanted to make sure to have a thread that players over time can add feedback and thoughts to. We have internal discussions all the time about feedback and what we can do to address feedback for ESO overall. Having feedback for overland content is helpful for those conversations as they arise.

Thanks Kevin! It's good to know that Rich's last statement is still the official position. Although I hope they change their mind in the future!

If they do change things, I hope they give more advance notice and more advance detail than they did for AwA.

Agreed. Whether it's promoted as "new" or "re-balanced", we need advance notice of it, because it may have a major impact on how we play the game.

Or IF some of us do.

Well, if they don't do "optional" I'll just quit playing. Which means they don't get 3 annual subs.

Not that they care.

My thinking is that if they don't do a "debuff potion/scroll/spell/curse" then they won't do anything. I am not expecting that they would do separate zones, sliders, or anything more complicated due to development cost, age of the game, etc.

Eh. We'll see. I'm not going to say any more.

Aardappelboom

Elsonso wrote: »

My thinking is that if they don't do a "debuff potion/scroll/spell/curse" then they won't do anything. I am not expecting that they would do separate zones, sliders, or anything more complicated due to development cost, age of the game, etc.

Agreed, I get that this doesn't warrant a full rewrite of the existing game to make everything seperated, and I wouldn't want that anyway.

A debuff slider might be a "quick and elegant solution" but if that's not in the cards by now we'll probaby not see this any time soon.

SilverBride

Elsonso wrote: »

My thinking is that if they don't do a "debuff potion/scroll/spell/curse" then they won't do anything. I am not expecting that they would do separate zones, sliders, or anything more complicated due to development cost, age of the game, etc.

I agree for these reasons and also that they may not see enough of an interest from the general playerbase.

I am curious though if something like a debuff item has been considered. This seems like a perfect solution to me because I assume it would be much less complicated to develop and would only affect the player that is using it.

spartaxoxo

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

My thinking is that if they don't do a "debuff potion/scroll/spell/curse" then they won't do anything. I am not expecting that they would do separate zones, sliders, or anything more complicated due to development cost, age of the game, etc.

Agreed, I get that this doesn't warrant a full rewrite of the existing game to make everything seperated, and I wouldn't want that anyway.

A debuff slider might be a "quick and elegant solution" but if that's not in the cards by now we'll probaby not see this any time soon.

If the statement by Rich is the current statement, we wouldn't see it until 2024 at the latest. Unless it's a surprise.

Elsonso

.

SilverBride wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

My thinking is that if they don't do a "debuff potion/scroll/spell/curse" then they won't do anything. I am not expecting that they would do separate zones, sliders, or anything more complicated due to development cost, age of the game, etc.

I agree for these reasons and also that they may not see enough of an interest from the general playerbase.

I am curious though if something like a debuff item has been considered. This seems like a perfect solution to me because I assume it would be much less complicated to develop and would only affect the player that is using it.

I am sure that they are familiar with the idea. They read this thread.

Anything they do impacts everyone who plays the game. Even a "debuff" impacts those who are not using it, as the debuff players are there next to them. There are potentials for inequalities and exploits. Yes, they can be solved, but it might take them a few updates to iron everything out, if it doesn't turn into a moving target with each combat update they do.

SilverBride

Elsonso wrote: »

Even a "debuff" impacts those who are not using it, as the debuff players are there next to them.

Being next to a debuffed character wouldn't be any different than being next to a character that is lower level or higher level... or worse geared or better geared... or new or experienced. These things happen all the time because the world has a very broad mix of characters interacting on the same World Bosses, Delves, Dolmens etc.. This is what makes it an MMO and not a single player game.

tokeinskyblu

Possible idea.

Instead of having the whole zones vet.

If you set your group to vet (just like dungeons and arena). All delves, public dungeons and story instances become vet mode.

This way when doing a story mission the boss fights are not so anti climatic. Also In normal overland outside of instances everyone will be in the same world.

Also this will make delves more fun and public dungeons. (For me and possibly others)

I noticed that alot of the boss fights have mechanics and abilities programmed into them allready it seems like they have just turned their damage down so the abilities don't actually do anything.

Also to make these repayable would be a good idea with the increase in difficulty. You could even put achievements behind the vet story bosses.

Just my thought.

I don't think a slider would work properly. Like others have stated debuffing yourself would be ruined by others coming in and 1 shooting everything.

SilverBride

tokeinskyblu wrote: »

Possible idea.

Instead of having the whole zones vet.

If you set your group to vet (just like dungeons and arena). All delves, public dungeons and story instances become vet mode.

I'm not opposed to instanced content such as Delves and Public Dungeons having difficulty levels, but I believe it would be a major undertaking and less likely to happen than a debuff.

tokeinskyblu wrote: »

I don't think a slider would work properly. Like others have stated debuffing yourself would be ruined by others coming in and 1 shooting everything.

Others already come in and one shot everything. It wouldn't happen any more to a debuffed character than it already does to a new player or a low level player or an undergeared player.

tokeinskyblu

And people coming in 1 shooting everything is where the problem lies with the overland difficulty for myself and many others

SilverBride

Strong players should be able to one shot some overland trash mobs.

spartaxoxo

tokeinskyblu wrote: »

And people coming in 1 shooting everything is where the problem lies with the overland difficulty for myself and many others

The issue isn't that players keep running into each other. The story bosses are solo instanced, for example. The issue is that many players are too strong for overland, and a debuff slider fixes that.

It's already worked well in another MMO.

tokeinskyblu

Read my above posts. More about delve bosses, and story bosses also. My suggestion is to make the instanced content harder with an existing feature.

It seems like most of these bosses already have abilities and mechanics programed in they just need their damage turned on.

Also adding some sort of replay through main story quests would be great if these story bosses where made difficult.

Aardappelboom

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tokeinskyblu wrote: »

And people coming in 1 shooting everything is where the problem lies with the overland difficulty for myself and many others

The issue isn't that players keep running into each other. The story bosses are solo instanced, for example. The issue is that many players are too strong for overland, and a debuff slider fixes that.

It's already worked well in another MMO.

That's it, I always look forward to a chapter because of the zone, stories and adventures. But I decided to wait for something like this because it's just not fun to blow through a zone in a few hours,

vsrs_au

I must be doing something wrong, then. It takes me a lot more than a few hours to complete the main and side quests in a zone, it's more like days of playing time. I listen to the NPCs, enjoy looking at the scenery, attack most hostile groups I see, and am generally in no hurry to complete anything.

Elsonso

vsrs_au wrote: »

I must be doing something wrong, then. It takes me a lot more than a few hours to complete the main and side quests in a zone, it's more like days of playing time. I listen to the NPCs, enjoy looking at the scenery, attack most hostile groups I see, and am generally in no hurry to complete anything.

Best way to play the game, IMHO... I have spent the last couple weeks working through all the Aldmeri zones. Have more to do, as I still have an achievement in Malabal Tor to finish before heading in the March to see what trouble the Mane has gotten into. (I already know, but I don't want to spoil it for my character )

Aardappelboom

vsrs_au wrote: »

I must be doing something wrong, then. It takes me a lot more than a few hours to complete the main and side quests in a zone, it's more like days of playing time. I listen to the NPCs, enjoy looking at the scenery, attack most hostile groups I see, and am generally in no hurry to complete anything.

Well no, you're doing it right. I do that too by the way, it's just that any story dungeon or delve, even public dungeons take a few minutes to get through.

I even solo the dungeons on normal that are part of the story and really let it all sink in, but those don't take too much effort anymore either.

Sometimes I wish I didn't start doing PVP or Veteran content, it really changed the game.

I did a low level build by the way, it was more enjoyable, but part of the fun is trying new skills and builds while enjoying the story.

Anyway, I gave my opinion and listed my experienced earlier in this thread, it's a great game, I just tend to enjoy more difficulty, it's like that in SP games for me as well. I still think a simple slider would give a lot of players more incentive to play the story, varied difficulty for varied taste.

Kendaric

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Well no, you're doing it right. I do that too by the way, it's just that any story dungeon or delve, even public dungeons take a few minutes to get through.

I even solo the dungeons on normal that are part of the story and really let it all sink in, but those don't take too much effort anymore either.

Sometimes I wish I didn't start doing PVP or Veteran content, it really changed the game.

I did a low level build by the way, it was more enjoyable, but part of the fun is trying new skills and builds while enjoying the story.

Anyway, I gave my opinion and listed my experienced earlier in this thread, it's a great game, I just tend to enjoy more difficulty, it's like that in SP games for me as well. I still think a simple slider would give a lot of players more incentive to play the story, varied difficulty for varied taste.

Out of curiosity... how much CP do you have?

Regarding a slider: I suspect that any increased difficulty mode would just made the game more tedious rather than more challenging. There's only so much the devs can do without completely reworking every mob. The most likely changes you'd see would be to mob hitpoints and their damage output.

Elsonso

Kendaric wrote: »

Regarding a slider: I suspect that any increased difficulty mode would just made the game more tedious rather than more challenging. There's only so much the devs can do without completely reworking every mob. The most likely changes you'd see would be to mob hitpoints and their damage output.

I would definitely not be using it. Overland can be annoying when the mobs fight back against my obviously superior firepower. They need to learn to move to the side as I pass by.

Aardappelboom

Kendaric wrote: »

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Well no, you're doing it right. I do that too by the way, it's just that any story dungeon or delve, even public dungeons take a few minutes to get through.

I even solo the dungeons on normal that are part of the story and really let it all sink in, but those don't take too much effort anymore either.

Sometimes I wish I didn't start doing PVP or Veteran content, it really changed the game.

I did a low level build by the way, it was more enjoyable, but part of the fun is trying new skills and builds while enjoying the story.

Anyway, I gave my opinion and listed my experienced earlier in this thread, it's a great game, I just tend to enjoy more difficulty, it's like that in SP games for me as well. I still think a simple slider would give a lot of players more incentive to play the story, varied difficulty for varied taste.

Out of curiosity... how much CP do you have?

Regarding a slider: I suspect that any increased difficulty mode would just made the game more tedious rather than more challenging. There's only so much the devs can do without completely reworking every mob. The most likely changes you'd see would be to mob hitpoints and their damage output.

Just shy of 1700, been playing for 3 years, not that much compared to others.

I did test this out earlier by removing all cp skills, removing all passives, not slotting any healing skills, removing armor and equiping lvl 10 weapons and plated through Gremore that way.

It was fun, lots of stronger enemies have some mechanics and at least you have to block/dodge and interrupt to survive.

There's a lot of work being put into the game in terms of enemies but it's wasted because everything dies reamly fast when on higher level.

This is much less of a problem earlier in the game. It's just not scaled for more experienced players.

WiseSky

Made a post about this idea
edited

Kendaric

Aardappelboom wrote: »

Just shy of 1700, been playing for 3 years, not that much compared to others.

I did test this out earlier by removing all cp skills, removing all passives, not slotting any healing skills, removing armor and equiping lvl 10 weapons and plated through Gremore that way.

It was fun, lots of stronger enemies have some mechanics and at least you have to block/dodge and interrupt to survive.

There's a lot of work being put into the game in terms of enemies but it's wasted because everything dies reamly fast when on higher level.

This is much less of a problem earlier in the game. It's just not scaled for more experienced players.

Well ... I'm at 601 CP and I'm here since beta (took a couple of long breaks).

The game has become a lot easier over time, I still remember struggling with Doshia (first boss in Fighter's Guild) at release. These days Doshia i's just a speed bump.

I'm fine with overland/story being easy though, it's not different from other MMORPGs on the market.

TaSheen

Kendaric wrote: »

Well ... I'm at 601 CP and I'm here since beta (took a couple of long breaks).

The game has become a lot easier over time, I still remember struggling with Doshia (first boss in Fighter's Guild) at release. These days Doshia i's just a speed bump.

I'm fine with overland/story being easy though, it's not different from other MMORPGs on the market.

Doshia isn't a "speed bump" for me. I got past her twice (after I lost count how many times my girls died) and i'm never doing FG again for that reason alone.

High ping, bad reflexes, not able to manage twitchy combat - nothing's really easy for me. Oh - wolves and the like.... sure. With Oakensoul I'm somewhat better off. Still not doing FG again. Also probably not finishing DLC MQs any more - the quest bosses are just too hard for me to handle without pain and frustration.

DaveMoeDee

vsrs_au wrote: »

I must be doing something wrong, then. It takes me a lot more than a few hours to complete the main and side quests in a zone, it's more like days of playing time. I listen to the NPCs, enjoy looking at the scenery, attack most hostile groups I see, and am generally in no hurry to complete anything.

When I decided to ignore the MMO parts and focus on listening to every NPC, I had so much more fun. When doing a quest, I also talk to all the extra NPCs since they have their dialogue chance as the quest progresses, even if they never have quest markers.

There is nothing wrong with people rushing through because they are completionists, but ultimately just want to do end game stuff. As much as I enjoy trials, the narrative is what I most enjoy. And since I hate refreshing my build and gear when the game is rebalanced, I don't even bother with group content these days. Just the story.

Kendaric

TaSheen wrote: »

Doshia isn't a "speed bump" for me. I got past her twice (after I lost count how many times my girls died) and i'm never doing FG again for that reason alone.

High ping, bad reflexes, not able to manage twitchy combat - nothing's really easy for me. Oh - wolves and the like.... sure. With Oakensoul I'm somewhat better off. Still not doing FG again. Also probably not finishing DLC MQs any more - the quest bosses are just too hard for me to handle without pain and frustration.

Thanks for bringing up an often overlooked point... difficulty and challenge ARE subjective. What may be easy for one player doesn't have to be true for everyone.

Regarding DLC MQs, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you... they are just frustrating to fight.

TaSheen

Kendaric wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Doshia isn't a "speed bump" for me. I got past her twice (after I lost count how many times my girls died) and i'm never doing FG again for that reason alone.

High ping, bad reflexes, not able to manage twitchy combat - nothing's really easy for me. Oh - wolves and the like.... sure. With Oakensoul I'm somewhat better off. Still not doing FG again. Also probably not finishing DLC MQs any more - the quest bosses are just too hard for me to handle without pain and frustration.

Thanks for bringing up an often overlooked point... difficulty and challenge ARE subjective. What may be easy for one player doesn't have to be true for everyone.

Regarding DLC MQs, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you... they are just frustrating to fight.

Well, after being around here (the forum) for a while, I've felt quite frequently that no one gets my point of view - so thanks for making me feel less "alone"!

Elsonso

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, wanted to follow up here. We don't have any changes to announce at this time for Overland Difficulty. Rich's last statement is the current stance. But we wanted to make sure to have a thread that players over time can add feedback and thoughts to. We have internal discussions all the time about feedback and what we can do to address feedback for ESO overall. Having feedback for overland content is helpful for those conversations as they arise.

To follow up on this, I asked during the ESO Celebration AMA specifically about normal and veteran instances. Not that I don't trust ZOS_Kevin but I felt that the AMA answer might have a wider reach than his comment on page 163 of a forum thread. This is a long running thread, and I felt it deserved a little attention.

Matt Firor gave a very good answer, at least as far as I was concerned. I am sure that the AMA video will be released, in time, but Nefas has a video where he walks through all of the AMA questions. The position that they are not doing this has not changed, as Kevin stated, but Nefas was able to find out separately that the Bastion Nymics world events in Necrom are part of how they are answering issues with overland difficulty.

SilverBride

Thanks for the information and video link @Elsonso. I found a written transcript here:

https://eso-u.com/articles/eso_developer_ama__las_vegas_global_reveal_2023

spartaxoxo

SilverBride wrote: »

Thanks for the information and video link Elsonso. I found a written transcript here:

https://eso-u.com/articles/eso_developer_ama__las_vegas_global_reveal_2023

Thank you both for this link.

Why not increase overland difficulty? Why not have Normal vs Veteran instances of overland?

Sort of looking back at how we did things with difficult overland content back before One Tamriel, we didn't see favorable results from separating players based on arbitrary categories and we really want to allow players to play with whoever they want and not introduce another barrier of interaction between different demographics of players.

With that being said, we do recognize a lot of people want increased overland difficulty and the new world events (Bastion Nymics) that are instanced for up to 4 players in Necrom is one of our answers to that.

So this is the lastest statement made by Matt Firor during the AMA, I have put it here for easier reference/so it will always be available in this thread. This time it was Matt rather than Rich, but it's very similar statement. Looks like world events is how they want to address this for now.

Howda

ZOS check this idea. High HP wild animals that run away and we need to hunt them for trophies, mats, quests achievements etc.

You can also increase the HP of existing wild animals to a large extent or deers, rabits and squirrels with superb dodging.

You can refresh old zones if you can implement it everywhere.

CP5

Ok, so I've avoided coming back to this thread and am not interested in catching up on the previous 8 pages I've missed, but I did want to comment on this answer that they gave. @ZOS_Kevin, just because this is a thread under your name, and you've been the one to show the most attention to it, I did want to tag you, hoping that this will help feedback get across. But, that answer from the AMA is very disappointing. How many times in this thread have we explicitly said, 'we know the way things were done nearly a decade ago didn't work,' and yet still that's the reason given for not wanting to try anything major?

I can understand if it is too large of a time investment, or if it isn't something deemed worth the time. I've skipped years worth of overland content because playing the role of a god killing everything without resistance isn't engaging and robs any sense of value from the story or the world for me. I can understand if the opinion at ZOS is that players like me just have to deal with it, fine, I've only been logging in to do pledges with friends after months away after my trial guild finally died. But the fact that again "Pre One Tamriel" ways of doing things are brought up, has this thread not been read, by anyone?

Taking a look at the actual answer given, the reason given seems to be based around "unfavorable results from separating players based on arbitrary categories." What category? Faction choice. Your faction choice determined which third of the player base you would engage with, forever, and that being changed in One Tamriel was a good thing, without question. But what now?

When I log in I don't go out into the world and engage with it, my spot in the zone instance is as a person at the bank waiting for a dungeon queue to pop, or the like, I'm not engaging with other players there. If there was a vet instance, all the players in it would be there for that feature, meaning more players who would otherwise be doing nothing would actually be more likely to engage with one another, and with their spots freed up in normal instances, a higher ratio of players in those normal instances would also be engaging with each other. And even if that wasn't the case, difficulty options are free to toggle everywhere else in the game, so it wouldn't be like "before One Tamriel" where your faction choice kept you barred from others, but you could freely jump back and forth between instances, like what already happens.

So, short of it, that answer from the AMA tells me that this thread and the months of feedback in it haven't been internalized at all by at least a sizable number of people on ZOS's side, and I'm just really disappointed. The new class looks like it'll be fun, but I'll be leveling it by grinding because when I tried to level my warden and necromancer by questing I quit due to how dull it all was.