Overland Content Feedback Thread

twisttop138

shadoza wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

There you go, let us be fair with out quotes. Now, what is your difficulty with my statements?

Doubt there's any difficulty they're having, it's just pointing out a potential confusion and clouded judgement. Look, you're heavily biased against some of the player groups here and it's oozing though the text, if you're not even trying to put yourself in other's shoes your position will likely fall flat for other's who are actively trying to met both ends somewhere on a common ground, work out potential ways for the feature to truly work and not just be another dead on arrival addition.

It looks like you want to make other's experience miserable because your experience was ruined by your standards, it's fine, but you can not expect to not be disagreed with. It's been 315 pages, we already been through "let them suffer" rhetoric a lot.

So, your answer is Yes, they are quoting to bully my post?

It sounds like you are accusing me of deliberately causing people grief by not agreeing with them. I speak MY opinion, if your opinion is different and you do not want to discuss, skip past it. It is an opinion and a suggestion based on my opinion.

"Look, you're heavily biased against some of the player groups here and it's oozing though the text" <--- What does this even mean? I didn't even know there were groups in the fora.

I do not need to wear someone else's shoes. I have my own and they fit me well.

Why do you call my judgement clouded? Is it because you are confused about something I said?

I asked why a level of difficulty is needed in the overland if everyone wants to do quests, resource farming, gathering leads, running across overland without it being difficult. I did not make that up; it is in the threads. This thread.
The comments say that difficult public dungeons and delves are not wanted...because farming is done there and it already takes too long to farm.
The comments say stopping to fight a difficult mob when farming resources or surveys is not wanted because traveling across the map already takes too much time.
The comments say they do not want instances in delves and dungeons because they want to help someone.
The comments say they do not want instances in world bosses and dark anchors because they want to help someone or farm experience with a new character.
These are comments that I read in this thread. My statements are not clouded at all. They are confused as to where the level of difficulty is supposed to be?

Because it's not all about you.

Are you suggesting that my opinions do not matter to the Development team? Is that what you mean when you say it is not all about me?
If not, then . . . my comments are about me. Only me and my perspective because I am not qualified to speak for anyone else. Let us stop focusing on me. Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

I'm not suggesting your comments don't matter. I said it's not ALL about you. You have, as has been said to you before, a very biased and close minded view point. As another poster told you, we're past the part of the discussion where either side wants the others to suffer. Be it forced harder overland that has zero choice. That has been suggested many times. Ugh. Or be it this suggestion that people that want harder overland should be stuck in it or have to pay money to change back. That has been said too. You maybe? This is a diverse game with different views but we all play and have opinions. Yours are valid for you but not facts. Your inability to see any view point other then your own, or to read someone's post and twist it makes it very hard for people to take you seriously, along with your attacks on people doing legitimate in game activities like farming resources or grinding public dungeons or delves. I know you won't hear a word I say and will just twist it to fit your narrative, common these days. You don't play this game alone. Your opinions are valid and you should be able to share them but as I said, it's not all about you. Or me.

BasP

shadoza wrote: »

I asked why a level of difficulty is needed in the overland if everyone wants to do quests, resource farming, gathering leads, running across overland without it being difficult. I did not make that up; it is in the threads. This thread.

It’s not like everyone asking for harder overland wants the same thing. Others in this thread have asked for separate instances, and some players have said that they want everything to be more difficult all of the time.

Personally, I’d just love the option to make questing significantly harder. Right now everything dies in a few hits and bosses don’t pose any challenge (even with no gear equipped), which makes questing feel unengaging to me. That’s honestly why I’ve left most Chapter main quests unfinished. But, even though I'm mostly looking to increasing the difficulty while questing, I’d probably just keep it turned up most of the time.

shadoza wrote: »

Let us stop focusing on me. Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

As for what the 'right' difficulty should be, that really depends on the player. I’d like an option that makes Overland and quests feel as challenging as soloing a veteran DLC dungeon, for example, but others might prefer something closer to a normal basegame dungeon. That's why I hope ZOS will release something with enough difficulty options so players can choose the challenge level that works for them.

spartaxoxo

shadoza wrote: »

Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

This question demonstrates some confusion about things that I have said in particular. So, let me clarify.

I want difficulty to come in the form of a slider that secretly debuffs the user. This way I don't have to be separated from others to enjoy the difficulty because the change is to me and not the overland itself.

Adding debuffs to the player rather than change the enemies is something that has already been successfully done in other multiplayer games. It means that if a Vet Player and a New player were attacking the same world boss at the exact same time, only the vet player would experience the increased difficulty. I would take more damage from the same attack because I take say 20% more damage from all sources as an example.

Because my damage would also be lower, I also would not be able to bulldoze that newer player because I'd be at a similar level of power as them so we'd be both get a fun, challenging fight. I'd no longer be trivializing the encounter when helping them. Depending on the strength of the debuffs, the brand new player might actually hit it harder than me!

I would use the debuffs when I wanted to play the stories so that I could enjoy the increased immersion of actually questing in an environment where the enemies are threatening. Because that's the goal of all the harder difficulty for me. I want to enjoy immersive storytelling experiences.

But the story is NOT the only sole reason that I go to the overland. I go there as well to farm leads and rare items, to do my crafting surveys, and to do my daily quests.

I don't want grindy, repetitive experiences to also be time consuming and difficult. I already have to kill world bosses dozens of times just to get 1 structure plan from a daily quest. Crafting surveys are already extremely tedious. There are rare items that barely drop in the overland too. I have been trying to get the ayleid furnishing plans to drop for me on and off for years.

Crafting surveys, daily quests, leads, and furnishing plans are chore tasks designed to be repetitive. They are designed that way so players have a reason to be on the maps even when they are not doing the stories. They are tasks that are mostly unrelated to the story of the game. They are designed that way to ensure the world still feels lively and populated when some new character has been made long after the zone was released and most of us have finished the story. In fact, some of the drops are not even activated until weeks after the zone first drops. So, you couldn't finish those early even if you wanted to.

Why would I want chore tasks to be even more time consuming then they're already designed to be? Again, I have farmed for the ayleid plans off and on for years and still don't have them all. It is extremely rare. Why would I want to make something that is already time consuming, frustrating, and tedious even worse?

Not wanting unrelated chore tasks to be even more time consuming does not in anyway undermine my desire to be able to enjoy the stories of this game. Rada al-Saran has nothing to do with crafting surveys. I should be able to enjoy his story and have him actually be a real threat AND finish my survey quickly. Because the two are not related.

BTW for the subset of players who find Rada al-Saran to be a challenging fight? That is already the experience many of them enjoy.

I want to be able to enjoy the story of this game without being worse off doing chores or worse off financially (in-game or apparently real life since some you seem to think I should be charged real money for that experience). You may not find that reasonable. But, that would be your opinion and not mine.

Kendaric

BasP wrote: »

As for what the 'right' difficulty should be, that really depends on the player. I’d like an option that makes Overland and quests feel as challenging as soloing a veteran DLC dungeon, for example, but others might prefer something closer to a normal basegame dungeon. That's why I hope ZOS will release something with enough difficulty options so players can choose the challenge level that works for them.

If they work with a debuff slider to create difficulty modes, it could work that way.

But other than that, I really don't see many options that could work without having to separate the players. I hope they don't take the easy route and just buff enemy health and damage, as that wouldn't accomplish much.

disky

Kendaric wrote: »

BasP wrote: »

As for what the 'right' difficulty should be, that really depends on the player. I’d like an option that makes Overland and quests feel as challenging as soloing a veteran DLC dungeon, for example, but others might prefer something closer to a normal basegame dungeon. That's why I hope ZOS will release something with enough difficulty options so players can choose the challenge level that works for them.

If they work with a debuff slider to create difficulty modes, it could work that way.

But other than that, I really don't see many options that could work without having to separate the players. I hope they don't take the easy route and just buff enemy health and damage, as that wouldn't accomplish much.

There really are so many other aspects of the game which can be adjusted as part of a difficulty slider, or set of sliders. Things like debuff duration, stealth detection radius, potion efficacy and recharge...anything with a number attached, really. I've posted my own list more than once here. That being said, I would absolutely expect ZOS to start with a simple damage/health option first, and make additions later, probably after a lengthy testing process.

shadoza

twisttop138 wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

There you go, let us be fair with out quotes. Now, what is your difficulty with my statements?

Doubt there's any difficulty they're having, it's just pointing out a potential confusion and clouded judgement. Look, you're heavily biased against some of the player groups here and it's oozing though the text, if you're not even trying to put yourself in other's shoes your position will likely fall flat for other's who are actively trying to met both ends somewhere on a common ground, work out potential ways for the feature to truly work and not just be another dead on arrival addition.

It looks like you want to make other's experience miserable because your experience was ruined by your standards, it's fine, but you can not expect to not be disagreed with. It's been 315 pages, we already been through "let them suffer" rhetoric a lot.

So, your answer is Yes, they are quoting to bully my post?

It sounds like you are accusing me of deliberately causing people grief by not agreeing with them. I speak MY opinion, if your opinion is different and you do not want to discuss, skip past it. It is an opinion and a suggestion based on my opinion.

"Look, you're heavily biased against some of the player groups here and it's oozing though the text" <--- What does this even mean? I didn't even know there were groups in the fora.

I do not need to wear someone else's shoes. I have my own and they fit me well.

Why do you call my judgement clouded? Is it because you are confused about something I said?

I asked why a level of difficulty is needed in the overland if everyone wants to do quests, resource farming, gathering leads, running across overland without it being difficult. I did not make that up; it is in the threads. This thread.
The comments say that difficult public dungeons and delves are not wanted...because farming is done there and it already takes too long to farm.
The comments say stopping to fight a difficult mob when farming resources or surveys is not wanted because traveling across the map already takes too much time.
The comments say they do not want instances in delves and dungeons because they want to help someone.
The comments say they do not want instances in world bosses and dark anchors because they want to help someone or farm experience with a new character.
These are comments that I read in this thread. My statements are not clouded at all. They are confused as to where the level of difficulty is supposed to be?

Because it's not all about you.

Are you suggesting that my opinions do not matter to the Development team? Is that what you mean when you say it is not all about me?
If not, then . . . my comments are about me. Only me and my perspective because I am not qualified to speak for anyone else. Let us stop focusing on me. Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

I'm not suggesting your comments don't matter. I said it's not ALL about you. You have, as has been said to you before, a very biased and close minded view point. As another poster told you, we're past the part of the discussion where either side wants the others to suffer. Be it forced harder overland that has zero choice. That has been suggested many times. Ugh. Or be it this suggestion that people that want harder overland should be stuck in it or have to pay money to change back. That has been said too. You maybe? This is a diverse game with different views but we all play and have opinions. Yours are valid for you but not facts. Your inability to see any view point other then your own, or to read someone's post and twist it makes it very hard for people to take you seriously, along with your attacks on people doing legitimate in game activities like farming resources or grinding public dungeons or delves. I know you won't hear a word I say and will just twist it to fit your narrative, common these days. You don't play this game alone. Your opinions are valid and you should be able to share them but as I said, it's not all about you. Or me.

Your opinion does not matter to me. Your opinions are not facts. This is not all about you. What?
If you don't agree with my take, you can move on without commenting. It is never necessary to attempt to belittle or dismiss a poster.

I do think it odd that my comments are considered 'attacks' by you. Why? I was stated what others have said in this thread. You can, if you had a mind for it, go back through the last few pages of the thread and see where the comments are said by different posters.

It is a fact that some high level players interfere with the progression or enjoyment of other players. It is not an attack it is a legitimate complaint. Legitimate enough that someone suggested that it should not be possible that a low level interfere with a hard-mode fight because they didn't want someone to one-hit their target and steal their kill. It is not an attack when they said it and it is not one when I say it.

After providing examples of what was said in this thread, I asked a question, Where is the difficulty supposed to be? Instead of providing an answer you fly into a rant about how no one agrees with me, no one takes me seriously, I am attacking a group, I am twisting posted words, I am bias and closed minded. Goodness, have you every heard the words: "when all you have are insults, you have no argument?"

My opinion ==> Farming is NOT a legitimate part of the game. Picking up resources as you are playing is.
If farming was a legitimate part of the game then the development team would have a faster respawn rate so everyone can enjoy that part of the game.
If farming is a legitimate part of the game, some of those resources would not be tied to group play or DLC locations.
If farming was a legitimate part of the game, would there not be more storage space provided to put those farmed resources?
It may be part of the way some play the game, but I believe it is not meant to be a feature of the game.

shadoza

BasP wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

I asked why a level of difficulty is needed in the overland if everyone wants to do quests, resource farming, gathering leads, running across overland without it being difficult. I did not make that up; it is in the threads. This thread.

It’s not like everyone asking for harder overland wants the same thing. Others in this thread have asked for separate instances, and some players have said that they want everything to be more difficult all of the time.

Personally, I’d just love the option to make questing significantly harder. Right now everything dies in a few hits and bosses don’t pose any challenge (even with no gear equipped), which makes questing feel unengaging to me. That’s honestly why I’ve left most Chapter main quests unfinished. But, even though I'm mostly looking to increasing the difficulty while questing, I’d probably just keep it turned up most of the time.

shadoza wrote: »

Let us stop focusing on me. Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

As for what the 'right' difficulty should be, that really depends on the player. I’d like an option that makes Overland and quests feel as challenging as soloing a veteran DLC dungeon, for example, but others might prefer something closer to a normal basegame dungeon. That's why I hope ZOS will release something with enough difficulty options so players can choose the challenge level that works for them.

Nice answer.
Everyone wants what suits their nature. How do you think ZOS should approach the creation of a difficult level of overland. The development cannot please everyone at once.

shadoza

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

This question demonstrates some confusion about things that I have said in particular. So, let me clarify.

I want difficulty to come in the form of a slider that secretly debuffs the user. This way I don't have to be separated from others to enjoy the difficulty because the change is to me and not the overland itself.

Adding debuffs to the player rather than change the enemies is something that has already been successfully done in other multiplayer games. It means that if a Vet Player and a New player were attacking the same world boss at the exact same time, only the vet player would experience the increased difficulty. I would take more damage from the same attack because I take say 20% more damage from all sources as an example.

Because my damage would also be lower, I also would not be able to bulldoze that newer player because I'd be at a similar level of power as them so we'd be both get a fun, challenging fight. I'd no longer be trivializing the encounter when helping them. Depending on the strength of the debuffs, the brand new player might actually hit it harder than me!

I would use the debuffs when I wanted to play the stories so that I could enjoy the increased immersion of actually questing in an environment where the enemies are threatening. Because that's the goal of all the harder difficulty for me. I want to enjoy immersive storytelling experiences.

But the story is NOT the only sole reason that I go to the overland. I go there as well to farm leads and rare items, to do my crafting surveys, and to do my daily quests.

I don't want grindy, repetitive experiences to also be time consuming and difficult. I already have to kill world bosses dozens of times just to get 1 structure plan from a daily quest. Crafting surveys are already extremely tedious. There are rare items that barely drop in the overland too. I have been trying to get the ayleid furnishing plans to drop for me on and off for years.

Crafting surveys, daily quests, leads, and furnishing plans are chore tasks designed to be repetitive. They are designed that way so players have a reason to be on the maps even when they are not doing the stories. They are tasks that are mostly unrelated to the story of the game. They are designed that way to ensure the world still feels lively and populated when some new character has been made long after the zone was released and most of us have finished the story. In fact, some of the drops are not even activated until weeks after the zone first drops. So, you couldn't finish those early even if you wanted to.

Why would I want chore tasks to be even more time consuming then they're already designed to be? Again, I have farmed for the ayleid plans off and on for years and still don't have them all. It is extremely rare. Why would I want to make something that is already time consuming, frustrating, and tedious even worse?

Not wanting unrelated chore tasks to be even more time consuming does not in anyway undermine my desire to be able to enjoy the stories of this game. Rada al-Saran has nothing to do with crafting surveys. I should be able to enjoy his story and have him actually be a real threat AND finish my survey quickly. Because the two are not related.

BTW for the subset of players who find Rada al-Saran to be a challenging fight? That is already the experience many of them enjoy.

I want to be able to enjoy the story of this game without being worse off doing chores or worse off financially (in-game or apparently real life since some you seem to think I should be charged real money for that experience). You may not find that reasonable. But, that would be your opinion and not mine.

Awesome explanation, thank you for responding.
The concept of placing the slider on the character rather than the game sounds like a good plan. I worry about performance when too many things are happening in the background. Having the slider on the character feels like it would impact only the player using the slider and not other players if they change it often. In this scenario, sliding it to low will not change what other people do.
How do you think PvP overland fighting should be handled? Other players will not know where your slider is when you challenge them.

ESO_player123

shadoza wrote: »

My opinion ==> Farming is NOT a legitimate part of the game. Picking up resources as you are playing is.
If farming was a legitimate part of the game then the development team would have a faster respawn rate so everyone can enjoy that part of the game.

Semi-artificial scarcity of resources/things in MMOs is the part that drives trade between players.

shadoza wrote: »

If farming is a legitimate part of the game, some of those resources would not be tied to group play or DLC locations.

I do not understand this argument at all. If someone makes a choice not to participate in group content or not buy a DLC (legitimate personal choices, by the way) it does not mean that any part of those are not legitimate activities.

shadoza wrote: »

If farming was a legitimate part of the game, would there not be more storage space provided to put those farmed resources?

Insufficient storage has nothing to do with farming being legitimate activity or not. It's made limited so ZOS could sell extras to players for $$$ (craft bag + double space for ESO+).

I have played only 3 MMOs over the last 25 years, so I probably have less experience with them. However, in every single one of them there was stuff that was farmed by players. I think many players would argue that farming IS a part of MMO genre.

spartaxoxo

shadoza wrote: »

Awesome explanation, thank you for responding.
The concept of placing the slider on the character rather than the game sounds like a good plan. I worry about performance when too many things are happening in the background. Having the slider on the character feels like it would impact only the player using the slider and not other players if they change it often. In this scenario, sliding it to low will not change what other people do.
How do you think PvP overland fighting should be handled? Other players will not know where your slider is when you challenge them.

Just disable during duels and PvP zones. If you're PvPing then the challenge is the other players. There isn't any free roaming overland PvP outside of IC anyway. Disabling it during duels just saves players a click.

ESO_player123 wrote: »

I have played only 3 MMOs over the last 25 years, so I probably have less experience with them. However, in every single one of them there was stuff that was farmed by players. I think many players would argue that farming IS a part of MMO genre.

I agree. Almost every MMO has farming and it's considered a standard part of the genre. I really only say almost because I'm sure there's some game out there that doesn't have it. I can't think of any atm but it's a large genre.

ETA

It's pretty standard practice for MMO developers to incentivize that behavior with rare drops, materials, etc. This game is not different in that regard. There are rare drops, materials, leads, etc that can only be obtained by farming or buying from someone who farmed. Developers do this so that the game world feels alive through the presence of other players and she that those players can interact with one another.

shadoza

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Awesome explanation, thank you for responding.
The concept of placing the slider on the character rather than the game sounds like a good plan. I worry about performance when too many things are happening in the background. Having the slider on the character feels like it would impact only the player using the slider and not other players if they change it often. In this scenario, sliding it to low will not change what other people do.
How do you think PvP overland fighting should be handled? Other players will not know where your slider is when you challenge them.

Just disable during duels and PvP zones. If you're PvPing then the challenge is the other players. There isn't any free roaming overland PvP outside of IC anyway. Disabling it during duels just saves players a click.

ESO_player123 wrote: »

I have played only 3 MMOs over the last 25 years, so I probably have less experience with them. However, in every single one of them there was stuff that was farmed by players. I think many players would argue that farming IS a part of MMO genre.

Almost every MMO has farming and it's considered a standard part of the genre. I really only say almost because I'm sure there's some game out there that doesn't have it. I can't think of any atm but it's a large genre.

I was speaking of duels. An auto disable like in some of the PvP mini games would be way to do it, I think.

shadoza

Is it possible to show the price of houses from the map?
If not the map then on the listings?

shadoza

I would like a call back option for our companions.
This day, my companion was fighting a quest boss while it was shielded. He died. I had no way to call him back from the boss so his death was not preventable.

spartaxoxo

shadoza wrote: »

I would like a call back option for our companions.
This day, my companion was fighting a quest boss while it was shielded. He died. I had no way to call him back from the boss so his death was not preventable.

There already is one although I find it too finicky to use on console.

https://benevolentbowd.ca/games/esotu/eso-guide-pet-commands/

shadoza

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

I would like a call back option for our companions.
This day, my companion was fighting a quest boss while it was shielded. He died. I had no way to call him back from the boss so his death was not preventable.

There already is one although I find it too finicky to use on console.

https://benevolentbowd.ca/games/esotu/eso-guide-pet-commands/

hold the Y button while using the right mouse button? The Y button was assigned to companions ultimate attack.
I reassigned to use G instead. I have to use the right mouse to call back and use the left mouse to allow him out again. The buttons do work. Thank you for responding. I never thought of my companion as a pet.

Radiate77

Have we heard anything official about an Overland update yet? Where can I find it, if so?

spartaxoxo

Here's the latest updates on what's happening. They had originally told us this year but it's been pushed back.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Just to level set, while overland difficulty is in active development, it's not something that will be ready to be released before the end of the year. We're definitely excited to share more information on it as development progresses, though!

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We don't want to exclude anyone with this feature, and I'd like to reiterate the core values that Finn mentioned during the AMA:

• This will be optional and no one will be forced into it
• There will be varied levels of difficulty players can opt into
• We will NOT be separating players

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Fair question. Caveat of "this is still in development" but part of this feature will include proper incentives to opting into more difficult content, without making it feel like you are being punished for not doing it.

Radiate77

Has there been a statement about whether or not existing characters that have everything done will be able to jump in? I’d love to do some of the recent Expac bosses again for some updated loot!

spartaxoxo

Radiate77 wrote: »

Has there been a statement about whether or not existing characters that have everything done will be able to jump in? I’d love to do some of the recent Expac bosses again for some updated loot!

No statement on that, that I'm aware of. I think that's all we know for now. It's still in development.

shadoza

I would like to see a transport from thief's den to thief's den. A kind of underground travel that only thieves, and perhaps assassins, can use.

I would like to see the stories and the resources from the hirelings get an update. A couple days in a row, I was getting resources that were pulled out of someone's trash pile. If I can get 3k to 9k of a resource, I certainly do not want to pay a hireling for more of that.

There is something going on with some players, perhaps an item they are wearing? When they are close to my location, the latency rockets up to 700, 800, 999+ and stays their until they are out of the immediate area. Before they arrive and after they leave, the latency is 59 - 70.

shadoza

The thieves and assassins guilds need freshened up. After the storyline, working the daily quests gets boring.
Pick-pocket 30 towns folk in three different locations, where many of the locations have limited targets.
Go to dedicated dungeon to loot / kill under time? Why timed. Neither thieves nor assassins work quickly as timing is everything.
The going out into the world to murder someone, that isn't too bad but it's starting to feel like I am killing the same people over and again.

shadoza

The Dragons need a talking to.
When there is only two or three players fighting, the dragon seems to focus their attacks on my character. (Read that one character gets more damage then others.)
I got 10 hits of soul tear followed by a 4x fire attack. Moved away from the first one, then was knocked down by the second and three more in rapid succession that left no option to move out of the path.
This type of attacking does not happen when their are four or more players fighting. Since the game is supposed to be scaled, could we not limit the number of soul tears or element attacks to the number of player fighting?
The reward for killing the dragon (Northern Elsweyr) does not cover the damage to my armor when getting heavy attacks such as described. Gold and items worth 175 gold? Bah...

Swirlbeard

I think any changes to overland difficulty have to be some sort of personal setting. The disparity between people doing 150k dps and 20k dps is just to vast to find a middle ground to be found between them. I sit somewhere in the middle of that DPS scale and I crush overland with ease. With that in mind I still feel there is some baseline stuff that could ease some frustrations.

1st) I feel Overland mob stats should all just be bumped to that of vet dungeon trash mobs. Since Overland mobs tend to be 1-3 mobs at a time I don't think this will be too difficult for those on the lower end of the DPS scale.

2nd) Before attempting rebuild the mobs from the ground up with unique and Interesting mechanics, which most people will just wave at as they pass by on their mount, some simple tweaks may make combat slightly more engaging.
- Mob light attacks should have a slight damage increase.
- Mob AOE, heavy attacks, and special attacks should be tweaked to proc slightly faster, and deal significantly more damage to encourage dodging and blocking.
- Mobs should also dodge and block more
- Mage mobs should be able to apply stacking elemental effects. Maybe they already do this and I've just never noticed.

Player tweaks
- I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers, but holding block should have moderate diminishing returns, and I'd like to see blocking heavy attacks to set mobs off balance to more timing based.

Traps
- Somewhat of a tangent, but I feel traps should do a significant amount of health percentage based damage to encourage avoiding traps. I'm sure speedrunners would hate this, but traps right now do nothing.

From there we can move to a more personalized experience.
- High DPS players will certainly need an option to debuff their damage, since you can't stack health on mobs without making them a slog for low DPS players.
- Increased damage taken debuff, should encourage more strategic actions.
- Reduced resources is also an option, but I've never found managing limited resources particuarly engaging or fun.

Downsides are, those not participating in the difficulty settings can still come by and nuke mobs. Personally I wouldn't care, but I'm sure some people would. ZOS could also make an opt-in "hardcore" server/instance/shard, but this seems like it would be expensive and cumbersome.

Lastly, an idea for a lore friendly way to insert these difficulty debuffs. Dealing with Daedric Princes! Hercine seems like an obvious choice since he loves a challenge, but Clavicus Vile could also make some sort of bargain, some simple reward like increased gold gain to be debuffed. Perhaps each Prince can provide unique difficulty increases.

shadoza

Swirlbeard wrote: »

I think any changes to overland difficulty have to be some sort of personal setting. The disparity between people doing 150k dps and 20k dps is just to vast to find a middle ground to be found between them. I sit somewhere in the middle of that DPS scale and I crush overland with ease. With that in mind I still feel there is some baseline stuff that could ease some frustrations.

1st) I feel Overland mob stats should all just be bumped to that of vet dungeon trash mobs. Since Overland mobs tend to be 1-3 mobs at a time I don't think this will be too difficult for those on the lower end of the DPS scale.

2nd) Before attempting rebuild the mobs from the ground up with unique and Interesting mechanics, which most people will just wave at as they pass by on their mount, some simple tweaks may make combat slightly more engaging.
- Mob light attacks should have a slight damage increase.
- Mob AOE, heavy attacks, and special attacks should be tweaked to proc slightly faster, and deal significantly more damage to encourage dodging and blocking.
- Mobs should also dodge and block more
- Mage mobs should be able to apply stacking elemental effects. Maybe they already do this and I've just never noticed.

Player tweaks
- I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers, but holding block should have moderate diminishing returns, and I'd like to see blocking heavy attacks to set mobs off balance to more timing based.

Traps
- Somewhat of a tangent, but I feel traps should do a significant amount of health percentage based damage to encourage avoiding traps. I'm sure speedrunners would hate this, but traps right now do nothing.

From there we can move to a more personalized experience.
- High DPS players will certainly need an option to debuff their damage, since you can't stack health on mobs without making them a slog for low DPS players.
- Increased damage taken debuff, should encourage more strategic actions.
- Reduced resources is also an option, but I've never found managing limited resources particuarly engaging or fun.

Downsides are, those not participating in the difficulty settings can still come by and nuke mobs. Personally I wouldn't care, but I'm sure some people would. ZOS could also make an opt-in "hardcore" server/instance/shard, but this seems like it would be expensive and cumbersome.

Lastly, an idea for a lore friendly way to insert these difficulty debuffs. Dealing with Daedric Princes! Hercine seems like an obvious choice since he loves a challenge, but Clavicus Vile could also make some sort of bargain, some simple reward like increased gold gain to be debuffed. Perhaps each Prince can provide unique difficulty increases.

Do you really think 20 DPS is low. Most users do not reach that level in overland.
Traps in overland do not make sense to me. People passing through an area should not be subjected to quest attibutes.

Swirlbeard

shadoza wrote: »

Swirlbeard wrote: »

I think any changes to overland difficulty have to be some sort of personal setting. The disparity between people doing 150k dps and 20k dps is just to vast to find a middle ground to be found between them. I sit somewhere in the middle of that DPS scale and I crush overland with ease. With that in mind I still feel there is some baseline stuff that could ease some frustrations.

1st) I feel Overland mob stats should all just be bumped to that of vet dungeon trash mobs. Since Overland mobs tend to be 1-3 mobs at a time I don't think this will be too difficult for those on the lower end of the DPS scale.

2nd) Before attempting rebuild the mobs from the ground up with unique and Interesting mechanics, which most people will just wave at as they pass by on their mount, some simple tweaks may make combat slightly more engaging.
- Mob light attacks should have a slight damage increase.
- Mob AOE, heavy attacks, and special attacks should be tweaked to proc slightly faster, and deal significantly more damage to encourage dodging and blocking.
- Mobs should also dodge and block more
- Mage mobs should be able to apply stacking elemental effects. Maybe they already do this and I've just never noticed.

Player tweaks
- I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers, but holding block should have moderate diminishing returns, and I'd like to see blocking heavy attacks to set mobs off balance to more timing based.

Traps
- Somewhat of a tangent, but I feel traps should do a significant amount of health percentage based damage to encourage avoiding traps. I'm sure speedrunners would hate this, but traps right now do nothing.

From there we can move to a more personalized experience.
- High DPS players will certainly need an option to debuff their damage, since you can't stack health on mobs without making them a slog for low DPS players.
- Increased damage taken debuff, should encourage more strategic actions.
- Reduced resources is also an option, but I've never found managing limited resources particuarly engaging or fun.

Downsides are, those not participating in the difficulty settings can still come by and nuke mobs. Personally I wouldn't care, but I'm sure some people would. ZOS could also make an opt-in "hardcore" server/instance/shard, but this seems like it would be expensive and cumbersome.

Lastly, an idea for a lore friendly way to insert these difficulty debuffs. Dealing with Daedric Princes! Hercine seems like an obvious choice since he loves a challenge, but Clavicus Vile could also make some sort of bargain, some simple reward like increased gold gain to be debuffed. Perhaps each Prince can provide unique difficulty increases.

Do you really think 20 DPS is low. Most users do not reach that level in overland.
Traps in overland do not make sense to me. People passing through an area should not be subjected to quest attibutes.

If you feel it is lower, sure. That means the disparity is even greater.

As for traps, I wasn't advocating for adding them in the forests and fields. I was referring to the ones that already exist in Delves, dungeons, etc. As I said, it was a tangent.

twisttop138

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Let us talk about the question I posed. Where is the level of difficulty supposed to be?

This question demonstrates some confusion about things that I have said in particular. So, let me clarify.

I want difficulty to come in the form of a slider that secretly debuffs the user. This way I don't have to be separated from others to enjoy the difficulty because the change is to me and not the overland itself.

Adding debuffs to the player rather than change the enemies is something that has already been successfully done in other multiplayer games. It means that if a Vet Player and a New player were attacking the same world boss at the exact same time, only the vet player would experience the increased difficulty. I would take more damage from the same attack because I take say 20% more damage from all sources as an example.

Because my damage would also be lower, I also would not be able to bulldoze that newer player because I'd be at a similar level of power as them so we'd be both get a fun, challenging fight. I'd no longer be trivializing the encounter when helping them. Depending on the strength of the debuffs, the brand new player might actually hit it harder than me!

I would use the debuffs when I wanted to play the stories so that I could enjoy the increased immersion of actually questing in an environment where the enemies are threatening. Because that's the goal of all the harder difficulty for me. I want to enjoy immersive storytelling experiences.

But the story is NOT the only sole reason that I go to the overland. I go there as well to farm leads and rare items, to do my crafting surveys, and to do my daily quests.

I don't want grindy, repetitive experiences to also be time consuming and difficult. I already have to kill world bosses dozens of times just to get 1 structure plan from a daily quest. Crafting surveys are already extremely tedious. There are rare items that barely drop in the overland too. I have been trying to get the ayleid furnishing plans to drop for me on and off for years.

Crafting surveys, daily quests, leads, and furnishing plans are chore tasks designed to be repetitive. They are designed that way so players have a reason to be on the maps even when they are not doing the stories. They are tasks that are mostly unrelated to the story of the game. They are designed that way to ensure the world still feels lively and populated when some new character has been made long after the zone was released and most of us have finished the story. In fact, some of the drops are not even activated until weeks after the zone first drops. So, you couldn't finish those early even if you wanted to.

Why would I want chore tasks to be even more time consuming then they're already designed to be? Again, I have farmed for the ayleid plans off and on for years and still don't have them all. It is extremely rare. Why would I want to make something that is already time consuming, frustrating, and tedious even worse?

Not wanting unrelated chore tasks to be even more time consuming does not in anyway undermine my desire to be able to enjoy the stories of this game. Rada al-Saran has nothing to do with crafting surveys. I should be able to enjoy his story and have him actually be a real threat AND finish my survey quickly. Because the two are not related.

BTW for the subset of players who find Rada al-Saran to be a challenging fight? That is already the experience many of them enjoy.

I want to be able to enjoy the story of this game without being worse off doing chores or worse off financially (in-game or apparently real life since some you seem to think I should be charged real money for that experience). You may not find that reasonable. But, that would be your opinion and not mine.

I always enjoy your responses because they're so grounded in reality. What you're expecting from this is very much how I see it. I have seen a lot of folks talking about this like it's gonna be one tamriel all over. That mobs will have challenging mechanics and every encounter will need to be carefully planned. I think that this is unrealistic. I don't want to say not possible but out of the realm of what Zos will likely do. What you suggest has the best bang for the buck. I just hope people don't set themselves up for disappointment.

As for the ability to switch it on and off, I think you're right on the money. I believe that most people don't want the mundane to become overly difficult. While many people want different things I think it's pretty common that people don't want to struggle doing surveys or riding to a treasure map. This is where I think many groups cross. There are a small group that th

Swirlbeard wrote: »

I think any changes to overland difficulty have to be some sort of personal setting. The disparity between people doing 150k dps and 20k dps is just to vast to find a middle ground to be found between them. I sit somewhere in the middle of that DPS scale and I crush overland with ease. With that in mind I still feel there is some baseline stuff that could ease some frustrations.

1st) I feel Overland mob stats should all just be bumped to that of vet dungeon trash mobs. Since Overland mobs tend to be 1-3 mobs at a time I don't think this will be too difficult for those on the lower end of the DPS scale.

2nd) Before attempting rebuild the mobs from the ground up with unique and Interesting mechanics, which most people will just wave at as they pass by on their mount, some simple tweaks may make combat slightly more engaging.
- Mob light attacks should have a slight damage increase.
- Mob AOE, heavy attacks, and special attacks should be tweaked to proc slightly faster, and deal significantly more damage to encourage dodging and blocking.
- Mobs should also dodge and block more
- Mage mobs should be able to apply stacking elemental effects. Maybe they already do this and I've just never noticed.

Player tweaks
- I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers, but holding block should have moderate diminishing returns, and I'd like to see blocking heavy attacks to set mobs off balance to more timing based.

Traps
- Somewhat of a tangent, but I feel traps should do a significant amount of health percentage based damage to encourage avoiding traps. I'm sure speedrunners would hate this, but traps right now do nothing.

From there we can move to a more personalized experience.
- High DPS players will certainly need an option to debuff their damage, since you can't stack health on mobs without making them a slog for low DPS players.
- Increased damage taken debuff, should encourage more strategic actions.
- Reduced resources is also an option, but I've never found managing limited resources particuarly engaging or fun.

Downsides are, those not participating in the difficulty settings can still come by and nuke mobs. Personally I wouldn't care, but I'm sure some people would. ZOS could also make an opt-in "hardcore" server/instance/shard, but this seems like it would be expensive and cumbersome.

Lastly, an idea for a lore friendly way to insert these difficulty debuffs. Dealing with Daedric Princes! Hercine seems like an obvious choice since he loves a challenge, but Clavicus Vile could also make some sort of bargain, some simple reward like increased gold gain to be debuffed. Perhaps each Prince can provide unique difficulty increases.

I really like your ideas. It would be so cool to have mobs rebuilt. I would hope to temper expectations though. For myself, seeing Zos's actions instead of words, would not expect them to do any kind of rebuilding of mobs. They're not going to add interesting mechanics to trash mobs or make overland trash the level of vet dungeon trash. They already spoke to that last. This will be, as it should, optional.

I also, as a tank, don't want them messing with block. Let's not let them break stuff that's working okish.

I think your ideas are really cool, and I would love to play that game, but I hope we're all being realistic in our hopes. In all likelihood this will be a debuff to you or a buff to all enemies. Or a slider. With some added rewards, maybe more gold or purple loot drops instead of blue.

Elderpatriot

As far i am aware of the current plans and situation:

- there are a lot of people who like to see more challenging Overland-PVE
- there are a lot of people who do not want to see any changes
- Zenimax is afraid of change, because they might lose people that prefer to see no changes at all

This leads to the approach: Zenimax does not want to seperate players, but considers to bring an individual difficulty option - so all users keep playing in the same world on the same layer & server side by side.

This will of course lead to problematic & immersion breaking situations:

A Hard-Difficulty-Player fights a Troll-Veteran and a Easy-Difficulty-Player comes along and joins the fight. All of the sudden the dangerous foe dies off in seconds and that ruins the experience of a harder difficulty in the first place. This will happen a lot, when players with different difficulty share the same playground. So we have a problem here, that needs to be adressed.


************** so what to do against the likely risk, that Easies and Hardies will disturb each other?***********

1. All players share the same stats, the increased difficulty comes only from increased attributes of the enemies (this makes balance easier). Note: I am not talking about AI-behaviour and other things, this is another topic, but could also be a part of this.

2. An enemy gets tagged by the player's difficulty on first combat contact. A hard enemy will become tagged "hard", because he got striked first by a Hard-Player. It should work the same way for Easy-Players, that will tag enemies easy on initial PVE-contact.

3. Hard and Easy-Players can not interact with combat situations of different difficutly than their own by default. Such targets become non interactable / invulnerable. That way people can not grief and disturb willingly or accidently each others experience.

4. If you however wish to interact with all players no matter their individual difficulty preferences, you will be set to the same difficulty level for that specific fight on an already tagged enemy. This could be an optional ingamesetting in the menu, that is turned off by default. So if an Easy-Player joins an already ongoing fight of a Hard-Player, he will have to face the increased attributes/behaviour settings aswell for that encounter.

5. Just in Case Zenimax has any idea of rewarding players of higher difficulty for their struggles with special goodies/increased drops, you could also distribute the rewards by the tag-filter. So intentional abuse by tagging a foe as easy by a friendly player and than killing it as hard player to get the best loot from easy encounters would not work.


So you have the choice, interact with all players in the world anytime (which keeps the community togegher), but be ready to face harder resistence whenever you choose to support a hardplayer in combat....or let it be and ignore them, avoiding accidental interaction with the optional ingamesetting to prevent joined encounters and just do your thing on your own level and pace.


What do you think about that?

SilverBride

Elderpatriot wrote: »

...so what to do against the likely risk, that Easies and Hardies will disturb each other?

Nothing because it won't be any different than it is now. We already have players of different levels and skills and gear playing in the same zones, and sometimes they are fighting the same enemies. That is what happens in MMOs.

disky

Elderpatriot wrote: »

2. An enemy gets tagged by the player's difficulty on first combat contact. A hard enemy will become tagged "hard", because he got striked first by a Hard-Player. It should work the same way for Easy-Players, that will tag enemies easy on initial PVE-contact.

It just feels far more complex than it needs to be, and it also introduces the problem of "kill stealing" for lack of a better term, in which any player can tag any number of creatures and "claim" them for their difficulty level, meaning those who aren't on that same difficulty will encounter either a much easier or much harder foe just because someone chose to tag them. It feels like it could create a new form of griefing, and it's not really necessary when we could simply be using a system of debuffs, enabled by the challenge-focused player, which affects only them.

Yes, that means they exist in a world where other non-challenge-focused players exist and that may mean that sometimes they play with people who might make a fight easier than desired, but those players will just have to accept that this is a feature which was added into the game, and the normal difficulty is what it is, and sometimes that's just going to happen. I count myself among those players, and if it means I can get an imperfect system which works for everyone without turning anyone away, I'm fine with that. I'd like to believe that most players would be as well, though of course it won't satisfy everyone.

ESO_player123

Elderpatriot wrote: »

As far i am aware of the current plans and situation:

- there are a lot of people who like to see more challenging Overland-PVE
- there are a lot of people who do not want to see any changes
- Zenimax is afraid of change, because they might lose people that prefer to see no changes at all

This leads to the approach: Zenimax does not want to seperate players, but considers to bring an individual difficulty option - so all users keep playing in the same world on the same layer & server side by side.

This will of course lead to problematic & immersion breaking situations:

A Hard-Difficulty-Player fights a Troll-Veteran and a Easy-Difficulty-Player comes along and joins the fight. All of the sudden the dangerous foe dies off in seconds and that ruins the experience of a harder difficulty in the first place. This will happen a lot, when players with different difficulty share the same playground. So we have a problem here, that needs to be adressed.


************** so what to do against the likely risk, that Easies and Hardies will disturb each other?***********

1. All players share the same stats, the increased difficulty comes only from increased attributes of the enemies (this makes balance easier). Note: I am not talking about AI-behaviour and other things, this is another topic, but could also be a part of this.

2. An enemy gets tagged by the player's difficulty on first combat contact. A hard enemy will become tagged "hard", because he got striked first by a Hard-Player. It should work the same way for Easy-Players, that will tag enemies easy on initial PVE-contact.

3. Hard and Easy-Players can not interact with combat situations of different difficutly than their own by default. Such targets become non interactable / invulnerable. That way people can not grief and disturb willingly or accidently each others experience.

4. If you however wish to interact with all players no matter their individual difficulty preferences, you will be set to the same difficulty level for that specific fight on an already tagged enemy. This could be an optional ingamesetting in the menu, that is turned off by default. So if an Easy-Player joins an already ongoing fight of a Hard-Player, he will have to face the increased attributes/behaviour settings aswell for that encounter.

5. Just in Case Zenimax has any idea of rewarding players of higher difficulty for their struggles with special goodies/increased drops, you could also distribute the rewards by the tag-filter. So intentional abuse by tagging a foe as easy by a friendly player and than killing it as hard player to get the best loot from easy encounters would not work.


So you have the choice, interact with all players in the world anytime (which keeps the community togegher), but be ready to face harder resistence whenever you choose to support a hardplayer in combat....or let it be and ignore them, avoiding accidental interaction with the optional ingamesetting to prevent joined encounters and just do your thing on your own level and pace.


What do you think about that?

I do not think that tagging is a way to go. Couple of scenarios:
1. An Easie can tag a lot of trash mobs because they are, well, easy. That will not be the case for a Hardie. So, Hardie will hardly get any mobs to fight.

2. A Hardie tags a boss and fights it for 5 min. Should the Easies stand back and wait until the Hardie is finished (no, they do not feel like upgrading their status to a Hardie)? Not a good situation because the bosses are supposed to be fought by players together.

Edit: At this point I feel that creating separate instances for different difficulty options would have been a better choice.