Overland Content Feedback Thread

BasP · September 3

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).

To be honest I would prefer a Veteran instance - with a difficulty slider - in which all enemies had more mechanics, but I'm not sure how realistic that is because the developers have apparently stated that they don't want to separate the player base. So a difficulty slider in the current Overland seems like the next best thing to me.

I recently finished the Legacy of the Bretons YLS and while I found the quest bosses way too easy myself, they already had a couple of mechanics and different attacks (see this video I found for an example). When I did that fight I wasn't engaged nor really entertained. If I had taken 700% more damage and my damage had been reduced to 25%, so that I actually had to dodge things, heal and pay attention to my resources, it probably would have been a more memorable battle for me though. Something that a relatively simple slider could have achieved.

spartaxoxo · September 3

Infinite Archive shows the mobs already have mechs that feel entirely different when you actually have to pay attention to them. A LOTR style slider is all that is needed.

It's unrealistic and unnecessary to expect them to redo the whole game and keep doing it every chapter they ever release. Not to mention the game needs people playing together. Player separation isn't a good thing.

Theist_VII · September 3

disky wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Uvi_AUT 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.

Theist_VII · September 3

BasP wrote: »

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).

Not only did it increase the damage taken and reduce your damage dealt, it caused enemies that would have no reason to be in your game at your level, to spawn way earlier into your progression.

That was the way Bethesda tackled increasing the mechanical difficulty with their slider, by adding enemies that had more mechanics earlier into the game to contend with.

How would Zenimax apply that to a shared world? I honestly don’t believe they know how to. Which leaves only one alternative, more mechanics to contend with in general, even if that means moving around already existing abilities and giving all of the enemies in the game a face lift.

With all of these new MMOs coming to console this year, the monopoly is over. Time for Zenimax to compete, and that starts by putting the work in to embody their vision.

spartaxoxo · September 3

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 · September 3

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. Pun intended.

spartaxoxo · September 3

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.

Theist_VII · September 3

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.

Honestly, with quality and experience as the only difference in slider tier reward, I might have to agree with you, only on the fact that it would be too much of a hassle, and not worth the additional time investment of forcing your difficulty.

That being said, there would need to be more sources of cleave irregardless, which would only be possible if more enemies are given cleave. As is, there is already minimal risk in Overland/Questing, when you add someone else into the mix with a taunt? Forget about it.

You can’t have enemies ONLY improve their intelligence against higher difficulty players when aggroed to them, otherwise there’s a way to bypass the additional difficulty completely.

Irregardless of the reward system, we’ve doubled back to the original point.

Enemies need more abilities, and they need to use them more frequently, and they need to cleave, that way even with a tank, there is still the occasional risk instead of a constant. They need to react to nearby enemy attacks, and work cohesively. That is how you design an Encounter. They should only be light attacking enough to give respite from something that would feel devastating on the highest difficulty. On a lower slider setting, that skill would be nowhere near as powerful and that same window would feel like an eternity.

spartaxoxo · September 3

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.

Theist_VII · September 3

Now, in good faith I need to mention this.

I do feel as though a Difficulty Slider is part of the best solution we could have to Overland/Questing difficulty, but…

One thing that has not been mentioned would be the sheer ability to troll other players. Anyone who has started the game after launch can reference a time when they picked up the game and went to play and everywhere they went, there was a clear path to your objective with all of the enemies dead. Or, when you’re fighting a boss that has killed you a few times, and finally making progress, some random vet 12 comes along and just one-taps it with a 100,000 damage Overload.

That experience would be the inverse.

Instead of veterans ruining the experience of beginners, you would have casual andies running through completely destroying your immersion.

This is why there would be merit to what @BasP suggested with a Normal and Veteran instanced overland, something I wouldn’t be opposed to, but not quite what I feel we need.

Theist_VII · September 3

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.

Now as far as the addition of more sources to cleave damage, nobody would be excluded from solo content, because cleave isn’t a detriment to a solo player, and we’re right back at different mitigations and damage per player.

spartaxoxo · September 3

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. We don't need to enforce difficulty on anyone that doesn't want it.

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 · September 3

Another problem with a difficulty slider and shared instances with people of varying difficulty…

One player could set their difficulty to Legendary, and another could set theirs to Story. Said player on Story could farm mobs beside said player on Legendary for the additional experience, while instantly killing everything.

Well, we could just lower the group’s experience to match the lowest difficulty of a player in there, or force the group to play at the same difficulty… but wait… you don’t have to group.

Theist_VII · September 3

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 · September 3

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 · September 3

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 · September 3

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 · September 3

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.

Anyone who started this game with a group of friends can tell the same story, of how everyone progressed apart and inevitable fell off of the game.

At the very least having the option to have an engaging experience solo would be great!

spartaxoxo · September 3

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 · September 3

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

Yeah, I just tacked that back on the quote. Trying to respect the conversation enough to give complete posts but I’m at work. Sorry for the edits.

Theist_VII · September 3

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.

disky · September 3

Theist_VII wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Theist_VII wrote: »

Uvi_AUT 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.

I disagree. As I said, even adjusting damage taken and received will force the player to think quickly and respond to the challenge of the moment. And looking at the Active Combat section of that post again, I don't see any evidence to show that they haven't held up their ideals. Brian said the following:

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

This is theoretically all happening. The problem is that we're so powerful by comparison to everything in overland that we don't get to experience monsters the way they're meant to be experienced, because they die in tenths of a second. Giving them more time to cause trouble and empowering them to be troublesome would have a real impact on how we approach them.

New mechanics would be cool, I'd love to see them. But I don't think they're necessary if we can experience overland as it is now with a greater sense of peril. It would also be a huge amount of work and it would *** off a lot of players, which ZOS does not want to do.

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.

I agree! Challenge sliders go a long way to increasing a desire for group play, in my opinion. We know this, because veteran dungeons exist, and they do that.

SilverBride · September 4

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.

Elsonso · September 4

disky wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

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.

disky · September 4

Elsonso wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

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.

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Something has to be done, that much is clear, and recent contributors to this thread seem to be trying to sell ideas which are more than a slider. The fact is though, we have pretty limited options if we're ever going to see anything change, and they're limited by a number of factors. Player sentiment being probably the biggest one, followed by what ZOS feels is best for the game, as well as development priority and workload. If anyone here expects to see anything get done, they have to set reasonable expectations, and a slider is, in my opinion, one of the most feasible options because it doesn't require a lot of additional dev time, and if it's handled properly, would not create much in the way of negative community sentiment.

I'd love to see a total overhaul of overland combat which adds all kinds of new behaviors but that's just never going to happen, and the fact that people ignore how much a slider would actually improve the experience feels very short-sighted. We already have the bones of a great experience, it's just held back by how braindead the experience is.

Theist_VII · September 4

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.

TaSheen · September 4

*sigh* "Trash" when referring to minor enemies in an MMO, even in packs, has been extant for many many years. I first ran across this as an MMO term in 2006 when I first started playing WoW.

In this case, a dictionary definition has nothing to do with the current meaning in this MMO or many others.

SilverBride · September 4

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.

vsrs_au · September 4

There are several sites giving definitions of the term "trash mob", and clearly indicating it's a gaming term.

Theist_VII · September 4

Using a word that is derogatory and meant to describe something or someone as useless, and a waste is never good. Regardless of whether you refer to it as slang. It’s disrespectful to the extreme, and in the case of ESO’s non-boss encounters, it’s fitting.