Nothing will ever change if we stop shouting about it.FlopsyPrince wrote: »Same arguments, same lack of change. Not much will happen, unless something finally does.First, I'd love to hear your explanation for why this will be so incredibly difficult as to be prohibitive, when ZOS has allocated resources for projects which seem to have little impact for players relative to their complexity, like Tales of Tribute.FlopsyPrince wrote: »I said it very early in the thread, but changing overland is significantly harder than many seem to realize. A blanket fix would not work, fine tuning would be needed with LOTS of that!
Second, ZOS has said that they don't want to do it because they don't want to alienate players who enjoy the difficulty as it is, but we've been talking about a way to implement it which doesn't affect them. I don't think that implementing it is an issue of difficulty. It's the fear that the perception of this feature could cause backlash before it hits live.
EchoesofThunder wrote: »Maybe do what WoW did? Have a server with a fun version of the game: no CP, no Rube Goldberg sets, no mounts with ridiculous shoulders/colors/flashing lights, no account-wide achievements, maybe no "one tamriel".
EchoesofThunder wrote: »Maybe do what WoW did? Have a server with a fun version of the game: no CP, no Rube Goldberg sets, no mounts with ridiculous shoulders/colors/flashing lights, no account-wide achievements, maybe no "one tamriel".
Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.
I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
You are the odd one out. Read the much earlier parts of the thread for your answers. A few at least admitted then they would want higher rewards "obviously" for higher struggle.
Tuning is needed since different mobs would impact differently. Just upping damage or lowering defense would not fix the problem or we would have had a solution long ago.
FlopsyPrince wrote: »Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
You are the odd one out. Read the much earlier parts of the thread for your answers. A few at least admitted then they would want higher rewards "obviously" for higher struggle.
Tuning is needed since different mobs would impact differently. Just upping damage or lowering defense would not fix the problem or we would have had a solution long ago.
I recognize that, and I'm sure ZOS (correctly) believes that most of the community expects rewards for voluntarily increasing overland difficulty, but I also believe that if we really want to feel challenged in this game then we're going to have to get over that and ask for change without expectation of rewards. Otherwise, ZOS won't do it because they don't want to upset their casual players.
Blackbird_V wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
You are the odd one out. Read the much earlier parts of the thread for your answers. A few at least admitted then they would want higher rewards "obviously" for higher struggle.
Tuning is needed since different mobs would impact differently. Just upping damage or lowering defense would not fix the problem or we would have had a solution long ago.
I recognize that, and I'm sure ZOS (correctly) believes that most of the community expects rewards for voluntarily increasing overland difficulty, but I also believe that if we really want to feel challenged in this game then we're going to have to get over that and ask for change without expectation of rewards. Otherwise, ZOS won't do it because they don't want to upset their casual players.
And yet Veteran Trials (Summerset onwards) & Arenas have perfected gear, and Veteran dungeons have monster helms.
Blackbird_V wrote: »FlopsyPrince wrote: »Such as?FlopsyPrince wrote: »It would be incredibly difficult because a blanket fix wouldn't cover all the special cases. It would need to be tuned in many different areas. A blanket change would not meet the desire nor would it avoid the problems of things like Harrowstorms now.I don't care about rewards. We were talking about tying increased challenge to a gear set itself. I've said many times that I don't think rewards are necessary and could be a barrier to seeing the feature implemented, but if ZOS wants to include rewards then I'm all for it. I just want to see something happen.FlopsyPrince wrote: »
Yes it is. No extra reward would mean few used it.
Look at how few do "hard" overland content now, the ones the mods keep closing and pointing to this thread. (Incorrectly I believe.)
You are the odd one out. Read the much earlier parts of the thread for your answers. A few at least admitted then they would want higher rewards "obviously" for higher struggle.
Tuning is needed since different mobs would impact differently. Just upping damage or lowering defense would not fix the problem or we would have had a solution long ago.
I recognize that, and I'm sure ZOS (correctly) believes that most of the community expects rewards for voluntarily increasing overland difficulty, but I also believe that if we really want to feel challenged in this game then we're going to have to get over that and ask for change without expectation of rewards. Otherwise, ZOS won't do it because they don't want to upset their casual players.
And yet Veteran Trials (Summerset onwards) & Arenas have perfected gear, and Veteran dungeons have monster helms.
Sure, but how many casual players end up in vet trials?
Once every 6 mths or so, I come back to check this thread to see if I should resub to ESO (I'm in the camp that finds the overland combat mind numbingly boring and easy). I'm not trying to change anyone's mind but just want to point that out to any ESO devs that read this. I'm continuing GW2 and New World for now, the latter has significant problems but I find the combat difficulty just right. GW2 has elite and vet mobs overland.
I know ESO has harder content but the scaling is off. Either content is super easy solo, or it's impossible solo (mostly, I know some good players and meta builds can do it).
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
spartaxoxo wrote: »https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
That was the last full statement but they did give a brief "not happening" in January.
https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/18/elder-scrolls-onlines-gold-road-chapter-takes-players-back-to-oblivions-best-city-on-june-3/
spartaxoxo wrote: »https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
That was the last full statement but they did give a brief "not happening" in January.
https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/18/elder-scrolls-onlines-gold-road-chapter-takes-players-back-to-oblivions-best-city-on-june-3/
spartaxoxo wrote: »https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
That was the last full statement but they did give a brief "not happening" in January.
https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/18/elder-scrolls-onlines-gold-road-chapter-takes-players-back-to-oblivions-best-city-on-june-3/
This is still such a wild statement to me. It completely ignores the possibility of a per-character solution, as if the only possible way they can implement something like this is if it affects everyone. It doesn't have to. There are obvious alternatives, and while I may not see all of the challenges, it seems to me as though debuffs could take care of this fairly easily.
spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
That was the last full statement but they did give a brief "not happening" in January.
https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/18/elder-scrolls-onlines-gold-road-chapter-takes-players-back-to-oblivions-best-city-on-june-3/
This is still such a wild statement to me. It completely ignores the possibility of a per-character solution, as if the only possible way they can implement something like this is if it affects everyone. It doesn't have to. There are obvious alternatives, and while I may not see all of the challenges, it seems to me as though debuffs could take care of this fairly easily.
For some reason they appear to be adamant it would have to be a big, sweeping, mandatory change or nothing at all. And so, they pick nothing to keep people from quitting. And I just don't understand why we can't just have a smaller, personal solution like most every other game in their own franchise.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
but for whatever reason after years of ideas put forth by the community and I assume, their own designers, they either refuse to solve the problem or just can't figure it out.
It's not an insurmountable problem. They could do it without alienating their casual audience.
I don't see how this relates to my point. You can have varying levels of challenge/skill floor within specific content, as they've shown with dungeons and trials. I don't see why overland has to be different, and I've never seen a dev explain why a per-character debuff/slider system couldn't work. Based on the information we have available directly from ZOS themselves, it seems like they either don't want to do it or they're unable to make it happen within their engine, the latter of which seems unlikely to me because they have similar code in other parts of the game.They have a design philosophy concerning difficulty. It's called "mastery". What that means is they create a range of content that requires different levels of skill, but also practice to complete. Hence the strong reliance of mechanics to keep fights interesting.but for whatever reason after years of ideas put forth by the community and I assume, their own designers, they either refuse to solve the problem or just can't figure it out.
I am aware that there might be implementation challenges that I don't see and I said as much in #6142. That being said, we know there is similar code in PvP and we're pretty sure that debuffs are not too hard to implement. I don't see why a debuff can't be applied via either a slider or some diegetic system, like an NPC or food or whatever ZOS decides is the best method. As for the challenge levers themselves, I posted about that in #5952:It's not an insurmountable problem. They could do it without alienating their casual audience.
It is for sure much more complicated than 90% of the people here make it seem. Most suggestions do not go beyond the interface (slider, toggle) without any clue as to what that slider should do. Because the moment you start actually thinking about that it suddenly is not obvious at all anymore.
The fact that we share a game world, for instance, already means that the basic layout of the encounters can't change and any difficulty modifiers would have to act on the player only.
Already that makes it highly questionable that any adjustment would make higher difficulty fun. But having isolated that, you then have to consider that even overland comprises comparatively hard and easy content which means the difficulty modifiers would have to vary from one encounter to the next and it may even be necessary to take into account play styles and builds.
I think 'dynamic' encounters, e.g. triggered by and tailored to the player separate from any existing quests, might be a solution. I asked Finn about that at the in-person event and though he said they did have some of that in infinite archive, he seemed less than enthusiastic about putting that in overland.
colossalvoids wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7897421/#Comment_7897421
from April 2023 - IIRC that's the last time any staff member addressed this.
That was the last full statement but they did give a brief "not happening" in January.
https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/18/elder-scrolls-onlines-gold-road-chapter-takes-players-back-to-oblivions-best-city-on-june-3/
This is still such a wild statement to me. It completely ignores the possibility of a per-character solution, as if the only possible way they can implement something like this is if it affects everyone. It doesn't have to. There are obvious alternatives, and while I may not see all of the challenges, it seems to me as though debuffs could take care of this fairly easily.
For some reason they appear to be adamant it would have to be a big, sweeping, mandatory change or nothing at all. And so, they pick nothing to keep people from quitting. And I just don't understand why we can't just have a smaller, personal solution like most every other game in their own franchise.
Guess because they don't feel monetary loss from us, most of us still play, sub or just quietly left with no indication why. There's also their satisfaction with is being in our little corners of dungeons trials or arenas as our main account activities. See no option to make them know what's out problem but this thread, as statistics will be always off because ones who play are forced into overland by events, antiquities, achievement etc.
TheMessengerOfDeath wrote: »Rich as already said no though so this thread should be closed honestly since they no longer have interest in this.
TheMessengerOfDeath wrote: »Rich as already said no though so this thread should be closed honestly since they no longer have interest in this.
I feel like the fact that the thread remains open is exactly why we should keep hammering. It may be that they simply want a place for people to go and rant in order to keep us out of General, but at the same time, it's the largest thread on the forum if I'm not mistaken. That has to count for something. And there are plenty of good ideas with reasonable discussion as well. If someone from ZOS actually reads this thread, who knows? It might actually make a difference.