Theist_VII wrote: »Also; people seem to forget that a difficulty slider in singleplayer games is a lot different than a difficulty slider for an online shared world. In a singleplayer game, you have less rare difficult enemy spawns, AI will move faster and smarter, and those same AI will have new attacks that are thought provoking.
Don’t believe me? Look at Skyrim’s Legendary difficulty and do a comparison, and that’s an Elder Scrolls.
You can’t have that in a shared world.
Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Just doing my 3month-check in.
Any news or is Openworld still bad?
Still bad, and worse, people are capitulating to the idea of a slider nowadays.
Funny enough, if a slider was implemented, you’d see the same faces back again complaining about enemies using the same dull attacks, and how trivial it is to avoid them.
What’s wrong with a slider? It outright solves the difficulty issue with minimal effort, as it does in many other games.
If you’re asking for ZOS to completely rework all enemy AI, we’ve now crossed into the realm of unreasonability on many different fronts. You seem to think you know better than everyone else though so what’s your idea here, given the many different needs of the community and current game limitations?
Enemies need to play off of each other, and bosses need more mechanics, ones that are already available in the game.
Do they need to re-write the book? No. But taking away some of the predictability of the game would go a long way towards making it a refreshing challenge.
Also; people seem to forget that a difficulty slider in singleplayer games is a lot different than a difficulty slider for an online shared world. In a singleplayer game, you have less rare difficult enemy spawns, AI will move faster and smarter, and those same AI will have new attacks that are thought provoking.
Don’t believe me? Look at Skyrim’s Legendary difficulty and do a comparison, and that’s an Elder Scrolls.
You can’t have that in a shared world.
It sounds like you want ESO Overland to become something fundamentally different from what it is right now. What you’re asking from ZOS is for them to rewrite the book.
ESO being an MMO means we are playing in a shared world with other players. That is exactly why ZOS can’t do what you’re saying, because your suggestions (AI reworks, different enemy spawns) would require the playerbase to be split into different versions of each Zone based on Difficulty setting.
The suggestion proposed by myself and many others is to implement a Difficulty Slider which strictly places a debuff onto our character alone. This “adjusts the difficulty” while keeping the whole playerbase together in fighting the same enemies.
Enemies need to do more synergies, depending on which enemies are around them. We’ve already seen the interaction between bandits, where one throws oil on the ground, a snare, yells, “Light it up!” and then another one sets it aflame.
Those interactions need to be more frequent, and more diverse. That is how you create a challenging, and thought provoking experience, WITH a slider.
Improving AI as a whole may be nice, but the idea of changing it based on difficulty is not an option here due to the structure of the zone system itself.
That’s not the idea. The idea is to have those synergies do more damage based on the difficulty, they need to be baseline.
Let’s use Shield Charge for example…
Getting hit by a charge attack in the current overland does not even a quarter of your health and the only inconvenience it provides is making the player have to CC break if they don’t want to sit on the ground for a few seconds. In a DLC Veteran Dungeon, that charge attack would kill you if you don’t block or dodge it.
Diversifying the abilities with which an enemy can attack you with and speeding up the frequency of said attacks would make the combat a lot more active for players at entry level and on the highest difficulties.
You're asking for something that will affect the experience of all players, so it won't happen. If ZOS is so reluctant to put a feature into the game which has little to no effect on players who choose not to enable it, there is zero chance they're going to do something that does. We just have to be realistic about what we can expect.
Theist_VII wrote: »Also; people seem to forget that a difficulty slider in singleplayer games is a lot different than a difficulty slider for an online shared world. In a singleplayer game, you have less rare difficult enemy spawns, AI will move faster and smarter, and those same AI will have new attacks that are thought provoking.
Don’t believe me? Look at Skyrim’s Legendary difficulty and do a comparison, and that’s an Elder Scrolls.
You can’t have that in a shared world.
My apologies if I didn't understood that sentence correctly, but I got the idea that you said that Skyrim's Legendary difficulty would be an example of something that couldn't be done in ESO. I believe all Skyrim's Legendary difficulty does is decrease the damage you deal to 25% and increase the damage your enemies do by 300%? That's what a slider could achieve in ESO as well (and it's less punishing than some of the difficulties I suggested a couple of pages back).
spartaxoxo wrote: »A slider allows for some enemies to gain special attacks that only targets the person with the slider.
So, they could do that for a few enemies instead of literally all of them
Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »A slider allows for some enemies to gain special attacks that only targets the person with the slider.
So, they could do that for a few enemies instead of literally all of them
Then you have the problem of groups exploiting the slider to have a tank with Story as their setting holding taunt.
While a reward system that put emphasis on quality of gear would seem like the best bet for the least invasive way of adding a slider, having character-bound collectibles might be an answer to this? It’s a slippery slope once you start sliding. No pun intended.
spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »A slider allows for some enemies to gain special attacks that only targets the person with the slider.
So, they could do that for a few enemies instead of literally all of them
Then you have the problem of groups exploiting the slider to have a tank with Story as their setting holding taunt.
While a reward system that put emphasis on quality of gear would seem like the best bet for the least invasive way of adding a slider, having character-bound collectibles might be an answer to this? It’s a slippery slope once you start sliding. No pun intended.
No. You don't have that as a problem. There are no important rewards from overland and even if there was it doesn't matter if someone wants to cheese overland gear, which is obtainable without even combat.
spartaxoxo wrote: »No. Actually, you can have them only attack the person with the slider. There is no need to change a solo content into group content for the purpose of excluding people from trash.
spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
50% because the enemy isn't the one affected.
Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
50% because the enemy isn't the one affected.
Okay awesome, so what’s the problem here with additional cleave again?
Shouldn’t an encounter be catered to your group size rather than a walk through the park with a friend, irregardless of the difficulty?
spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
50% because the enemy isn't the one affected.
Okay awesome, so what’s the problem here with additional cleave again?
Shouldn’t an encounter be catered to your group size rather than a walk through the park with a friend, irregardless of the difficulty?
If people want to group up to lower the difficulty of what is normally a solo encounter, I don't really care. It doesn't affect me in anyway. Most people are going to play it solo. And those that want to play together know that they are playing solo content in a group, so ofc it will be easier. That's likely what they want anyway.
I don't think the mechanics need drastic group play overhauls because the story quests aren't group content.
Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
50% because the enemy isn't the one affected.
Okay awesome, so what’s the problem here with additional cleave again?
Shouldn’t an encounter be catered to your group size rather than a walk through the park with a friend, irregardless of the difficulty?
If people want to group up to lower the difficulty of what is normally a solo encounter, I don't really care. It doesn't affect me in anyway. Most people are going to play it solo. And those that want to play together know that they are playing solo content in a group, so ofc it will be easier. That's likely what they want anyway.
I don't think the mechanics need drastic group play overhauls because the story quests aren't group content.
What?
If players want to lower the difficulty, they would… lower the difficulty. That’s the whole point of a difficulty slider.
Having the option to do content with a group and still have an engaging experience, opens the window to shared memories.
At the very least having the option to have an engaging experience solo would be great!
spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »The purpose of the cleave would be to prevent people not using the slider from pairing up with someone with the slider? But it's literally already solo content. It's already tuned to be solo content. If that person wanted an easy experience they would just play by themselves on normal and cake walk anything..
Then there seems to be concern that they'd get a blue drop If they paired up. Literally who cares? The rewards are mostly vendor trash and some exp. It's not a mode for farming anything. It's not intended as such.
Veterans don't need to affect anyone else in any way. And neither do the mobs they fight. We don't need to care about rewards because overland rewards are not competitive sourced, exclusive rewards.
If your Legendary modifier would be 25% damage done and 250% damage taken. (random numbers)
Your friend’s Story modifier was 200% damage done, and 50% damage taken. (still random)
You pull aggro of your Legendary monster, it splashes onto your Story friend. How much damage do you think they would take?
250% more or 50%? Genuine question.
50% because the enemy isn't the one affected.
Okay awesome, so what’s the problem here with additional cleave again?
Shouldn’t an encounter be catered to your group size rather than a walk through the park with a friend, irregardless of the difficulty?
If people want to group up to lower the difficulty of what is normally a solo encounter, I don't really care. It doesn't affect me in anyway. Most people are going to play it solo. And those that want to play together know that they are playing solo content in a group, so ofc it will be easier. That's likely what they want anyway.
I don't think the mechanics need drastic group play overhauls because the story quests aren't group content.
What?
If players want to lower the difficulty, they would… lower the difficulty. That’s the whole point of a difficulty slider.
Having the option to do content with a group and still have an engaging experience, opens the window to shared memories.
At the very least having the option to have an engaging experience solo would be great!
An engaging solo experience would be good. I agree there
Theist_VII wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Stafford197 wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »Just doing my 3month-check in.
Any news or is Openworld still bad?
Still bad, and worse, people are capitulating to the idea of a slider nowadays.
Funny enough, if a slider was implemented, you’d see the same faces back again complaining about enemies using the same dull attacks, and how trivial it is to avoid them.
What’s wrong with a slider? It outright solves the difficulty issue with minimal effort, as it does in many other games.
If you’re asking for ZOS to completely rework all enemy AI, we’ve now crossed into the realm of unreasonability on many different fronts. You seem to think you know better than everyone else though so what’s your idea here, given the many different needs of the community and current game limitations?
Enemies need to play off of each other, and bosses need more mechanics, ones that are already available in the game.
Do they need to re-write the book? No. But taking away some of the predictability of the game would go a long way towards making it a refreshing challenge.
Also; people seem to forget that a difficulty slider in singleplayer games is a lot different than a difficulty slider for an online shared world. In a singleplayer game, you have less rare difficult enemy spawns, AI will move faster and smarter, and those same AI will have new attacks that are thought provoking.
Don’t believe me? Look at Skyrim’s Legendary difficulty and do a comparison, and that’s an Elder Scrolls.
You can’t have that in a shared world.
It sounds like you want ESO Overland to become something fundamentally different from what it is right now. What you’re asking from ZOS is for them to rewrite the book.
ESO being an MMO means we are playing in a shared world with other players. That is exactly why ZOS can’t do what you’re saying, because your suggestions (AI reworks, different enemy spawns) would require the playerbase to be split into different versions of each Zone based on Difficulty setting.
The suggestion proposed by myself and many others is to implement a Difficulty Slider which strictly places a debuff onto our character alone. This “adjusts the difficulty” while keeping the whole playerbase together in fighting the same enemies.
Enemies need to do more synergies, depending on which enemies are around them. We’ve already seen the interaction between bandits, where one throws oil on the ground, a snare, yells, “Light it up!” and then another one sets it aflame.
Those interactions need to be more frequent, and more diverse. That is how you create a challenging, and thought provoking experience, WITH a slider.
Improving AI as a whole may be nice, but the idea of changing it based on difficulty is not an option here due to the structure of the zone system itself.
That’s not the idea. The idea is to have those synergies do more damage based on the difficulty, they need to be baseline.
Let’s use Shield Charge for example…
Getting hit by a charge attack in the current overland does not even a quarter of your health and the only inconvenience it provides is making the player have to CC break if they don’t want to sit on the ground for a few seconds. In a DLC Veteran Dungeon, that charge attack would kill you if you don’t block or dodge it.
Diversifying the abilities with which an enemy can attack you with and speeding up the frequency of said attacks would make the combat a lot more active for players at entry level and on the highest difficulties.
You're asking for something that will affect the experience of all players, so it won't happen. If ZOS is so reluctant to put a feature into the game which has little to no effect on players who choose not to enable it, there is zero chance they're going to do something that does. We just have to be realistic about what we can expect.
Anything short of an update to the way AI interact in Overland will be a failure to meet the goals mentioned by Brian Wheeler for an active combat.
Having a well implemented slider would allow people to lower the difficulty further than what is standard, to a “Story” setting so those updated mechanics would be even less of a problem than the already non-issue they provide in Overland.
ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »Active Combat
We believe combat is more engaging when you are on the move and continuously taking action. Battles should be exhilarating, with threats and opportunities coming fast and you feeling empowered to respond in kind. In any given moment you should have options for reacting to your opponents and shouldn't be held back by long waits between actions. This requires controls to be responsive and consistent so you feel connected to your character and in control of the outcomes of your battles.
- Block, Roll Dodge, and Bash/Interrupt are not constrained by the global cooldown
- No ability cooldowns and a short global cooldown
- Most abilities are instant, with cast times being the exception
- Weapon swapping
Theist_VII wrote: »Once again, a major issue with Overland/Questing is the lack of consideration for group play.
While playing in a group should not be expected, it should feel fun and rewarding to do so. This has been a problem for the game since launch, beginning with the design. The Harborage questline set the tone for ESO; and did so poorly, completely shutting off the ability to experience the main story with friends.
Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »No. Actually, you can have them only attack the person with the slider. There is no need to change a solo content into group content for the purpose of excluding people from trash.
Trash.
That is what people refer to Encounters in ESO as, and if I was the responsible developer, that would be the most insulting thing in the world to hear.
The slider will simply make it so that the character is more vulnerable and has a combat penalty of some sort. The mobs will be the same as they are today. A lot of what makes ESO easy is understanding the mechanics, so just dying faster isn't going to make the mobs harder. It might just be more frustrating.
This argument seems to ignore the fact that difficulty sliders which do nothing but adjust numbers exist in many, many games, and that people use them all the time. It ignores the fact that even minor changes make a big difference in how people approach a situation. I've made the comparison before but consider The Witcher III's Death March difficulty. To my knowledge it doesn't change behavior in any way but once you enable it, suddenly you're no longer spamming light attack. You're checking the bestiary, you're preparing for fights and you're using ALL of the tools available to you.
The slider will simply make it so that the character is more vulnerable and has a combat penalty of some sort. The mobs will be the same as they are today. A lot of what makes ESO easy is understanding the mechanics, so just dying faster isn't going to make the mobs harder. It might just be more frustrating.
This argument seems to ignore the fact that difficulty sliders which do nothing but adjust numbers exist in many, many games, and that people use them all the time. It ignores the fact that even minor changes make a big difference in how people approach a situation. I've made the comparison before but consider The Witcher III's Death March difficulty. To my knowledge it doesn't change behavior in any way but once you enable it, suddenly you're no longer spamming light attack. You're checking the bestiary, you're preparing for fights and you're using ALL of the tools available to you.
I know, but just because some other game does it does not mean it is right in every situation. This is why comparisons of Game A and Game B are not always relevant.
SilverBride wrote: »Theist_VII wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »No. Actually, you can have them only attack the person with the slider. There is no need to change a solo content into group content for the purpose of excluding people from trash.
Trash.
That is what people refer to Encounters in ESO as, and if I was the responsible developer, that would be the most insulting thing in the world to hear.
Trash is a very common term in MMOs and refers to minor enemies, such as random groups of wolves out in the zones, or the mobs between Bosses in dungeons. It is in no way an insult.
Theist_VII wrote: »That is what people refer to Encounters in ESO as, and if I was the responsible developer, that would be the most insulting thing in the world to hear.