spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
I want it to be as difficult as VMA
ok, so it seem to be balanced for CP 300 - will this make a CP 1200 happy? or will it again be too easy? and what about those with even more CP?
Yes. It would. VMA casts the widest net as the most difficult content outside of it is group content, so it should make a pretty wide swath happy. CP only matters so much.
Do you think (real question, because I have no idea about this kind of content) that ZOS could make an estimate how many are using it, based on the usage of VMA currently in regards to the total amount of veterans >= 300CP? Or is that too special to base a decision about possible user numbers on this?
VMA is actually pretty specialized but I imagine there would be a lot of overlap between those who like VMA and those want this, so it could be a decent indicator.
Quests are solo content and most requests I have seen want it to remain as such. And VMA is the most popular of the hard solo activities of which there is precious little. So seeing who had vma weapons before the change and how popular vma still is would probably be a decent indication.
Ok, this is promising, because ZOS needs a way to estimate the user numbers to make a decision about if it is worth the effort or not. Now another question - what if pvp performance would be much better by end of this year - will this still be popular, or will people just go back to pvp and this would have been just a temporary band aid - I think that this is something ZOS is anxious about, that they put in effort and in the end it will not get the user numbers to justify the effort made.
spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
I want it to be as difficult as VMA
ok, so it seem to be balanced for CP 300 - will this make a CP 1200 happy? or will it again be too easy? and what about those with even more CP?
Yes. It would. VMA casts the widest net as the most difficult content outside of it is group content, so it should make a pretty wide swath happy. CP only matters so much.
Do you think (real question, because I have no idea about this kind of content) that ZOS could make an estimate how many are using it, based on the usage of VMA currently in regards to the total amount of veterans >= 300CP? Or is that too special to base a decision about possible user numbers on this?
VMA is actually pretty specialized but I imagine there would be a lot of overlap between those who like VMA and those want this, so it could be a decent indicator.
Quests are solo content and most requests I have seen want it to remain as such. And VMA is the most popular of the hard solo activities of which there is precious little. So seeing who had vma weapons before the change and how popular vma still is would probably be a decent indication.
Ok, this is promising, because ZOS needs a way to estimate the user numbers to make a decision about if it is worth the effort or not. Now another question - what if pvp performance would be much better by end of this year - will this still be popular, or will people just go back to pvp and this would have been just a temporary band aid - I think that this is something ZOS is anxious about, that they put in effort and in the end it will not get the user numbers to justify the effort made.
In my experience, both as someone who used to do volunteer work alongside devs and management of an MMO and as a player of MMOs for a very long time, PVP and PVE scratch different itches. And there's even a significant group of players that don't like the other at all, though way more PvPers also pve than people give credit.
So I think that would have little impact on people wanting this, though some of the PvPers playtime would go down they'd still use it because their pvp playtime and pve playtime are different moods.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
Thank you for taking the time to provide an official response. It's nice to see more official communication like this. Really encouraging to see that we're not speaking to the void.Thanks for tagging me, SilverBride.
Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.
Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.
spartaxoxo wrote: »For the purposes of this
Veteran doesn't mean high cp btw. It means a player who has enough experience and capabilities to try to do more difficult content comfortably.
It's more about time spent in the game, desire to do more challening content, and posseses the skill/experience to be able to give harder content a meaningful try (and contribute meaningfully e.g not just paying for a carry) regardless of their success at it. It can be the 20k dps doing base game vets for the first time or a trial level tank and everyone in between. Who it isn't is the guys sticking to content that is a bit easier who isn't investing as much time sharpening their skills (not time investment into the game, as someone could be few months into this game and already doing vet content well, or spend years enjoying more relaxed content like overland or normal dungeons).
I know I said I would not comment on this thread again. But I thought I'd never see an official response.Thank you for taking the time to provide an official response. It's nice to see more official communication like this. Really encouraging to see that we're not speaking to the void.Thanks for tagging me, SilverBride.
Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.
Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
While I think this could be a possibility for future implementations in case it would be popular among veterans (which is not a given, a lot of CP-owners might not be able to do this kind of content, because they might just have grinded their way to high CP levels by doing dolmens over and over again), I doubt that there will be even a start without a consent about how difficult it should be - as in one option. I think your chance to get this started up at all is to get to a consent about 1 difficulty level.
From my personal perspective as a non-CP player it is like this
1. I don't want it to interfere with my gameplay - so I'm all for that you get your separate instance
2. if the difficulty level is in the reach of at least 1 of my characters one day, it might change my attitude towards this content
3. if it is too hard, I and maybe a lot of people will see this as a waste of resources which doesn't benefit us in any way
4. if it is not hard enough, it might not be worth doing either, if it fails to satisfy most wanting this
5. what spartaxoxo suggested is something I could actually support, if there would be a consent about it among veterans
You know, there is quite a discrepancy between what is successful and what I see when I look at guild rosters - pretty much everyone in those trading guilds, I was a member of, had high CP levels - but are these veterans able to do this content or not? It could well be that a lot are actually "casual", even they have high CP levels and might not be able to do this content. That is why I think the right choice of difficulty level for this kind of new content will be make or break.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
While I think this could be a possibility for future implementations in case it would be popular among veterans (which is not a given, a lot of CP-owners might not be able to do this kind of content, because they might just have grinded their way to high CP levels by doing dolmens over and over again), I doubt that there will be even a start without a consent about how difficult it should be - as in one option. I think your chance to get this started up at all is to get to a consent about 1 difficulty level.
From my personal perspective as a non-CP player it is like this
1. I don't want it to interfere with my gameplay - so I'm all for that you get your separate instance
2. if the difficulty level is in the reach of at least 1 of my characters one day, it might change my attitude towards this content
3. if it is too hard, I and maybe a lot of people will see this as a waste of resources which doesn't benefit us in any way
4. if it is not hard enough, it might not be worth doing either, if it fails to satisfy most wanting this
5. what spartaxoxo suggested is something I could actually support, if there would be a consent about it among veterans
You know, there is quite a discrepancy between what is successful and what I see when I look at guild rosters - pretty much everyone in those trading guilds, I was a member of, had high CP levels - but are these veterans able to do this content or not? It could well be that a lot are actually "casual", even they have high CP levels and might not be able to do this content. That is why I think the right choice of difficulty level for this kind of new content will be make or break.
That leaves me with a few questions I have, that I want to ask strictly to better understand where you are coming from.
1. How long have you been playing ESO?
2. Is ESO your first MMO or have you played others?
3. How many characters have you created?
4. What is your highest level character?
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
While I think this could be a possibility for future implementations in case it would be popular among veterans (which is not a given, a lot of CP-owners might not be able to do this kind of content, because they might just have grinded their way to high CP levels by doing dolmens over and over again), I doubt that there will be even a start without a consent about how difficult it should be - as in one option. I think your chance to get this started up at all is to get to a consent about 1 difficulty level.
From my personal perspective as a non-CP player it is like this
1. I don't want it to interfere with my gameplay - so I'm all for that you get your separate instance
2. if the difficulty level is in the reach of at least 1 of my characters one day, it might change my attitude towards this content
3. if it is too hard, I and maybe a lot of people will see this as a waste of resources which doesn't benefit us in any way
4. if it is not hard enough, it might not be worth doing either, if it fails to satisfy most wanting this
5. what spartaxoxo suggested is something I could actually support, if there would be a consent about it among veterans
You know, there is quite a discrepancy between what is successful and what I see when I look at guild rosters - pretty much everyone in those trading guilds, I was a member of, had high CP levels - but are these veterans able to do this content or not? It could well be that a lot are actually "casual", even they have high CP levels and might not be able to do this content. That is why I think the right choice of difficulty level for this kind of new content will be make or break.
That leaves me with a few questions I have, that I want to ask strictly to better understand where you are coming from.
1. How long have you been playing ESO?
2. Is ESO your first MMO or have you played others?
3. How many characters have you created?
4. What is your highest level character?
I think 2017 or so, when I started playing ESO - it is not my first MMO - I'm playing EVE since 2008, which is PvP everywhere, so I'm not averse to pvp in general, I just don't like it in a role playing game. Other MMOs I'm in are not comparable, because they are social environments and not games, like Second Life. I have 16 characters on PC EU - highest level is 38 - I try to advance very slow paced, because I fear, that once I am at level 50, I will loose interest, because I'm not interested in any kind of endgame content as it is - endgame is an alien concept to me, all before endgame is my game - but not endgame.
I'm more interested in the development of my characters than their level-progression (which means nothing to me), but to experience how their personalities develop over time based on their experiences and general character is what is fun to me - it is old-school role play, where I'm not the character, it might even be possible that some characters are developing in something quite opposite to my rl persona - but as it is role play, I play them as well after their personality - they are not I. And if those characteristics of them show, that they aren't hero-types, then I'll not playing them as such, then they are mediocre or even less - if their personality signalizes that they are lazy, they will nearly always choose the easiest way to get to something or totally avoid doing it - this is my kind of game play - level progression is not that important to me.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
While I think this could be a possibility for future implementations in case it would be popular among veterans (which is not a given, a lot of CP-owners might not be able to do this kind of content, because they might just have grinded their way to high CP levels by doing dolmens over and over again), I doubt that there will be even a start without a consent about how difficult it should be - as in one option. I think your chance to get this started up at all is to get to a consent about 1 difficulty level.
From my personal perspective as a non-CP player it is like this
1. I don't want it to interfere with my gameplay - so I'm all for that you get your separate instance
2. if the difficulty level is in the reach of at least 1 of my characters one day, it might change my attitude towards this content
3. if it is too hard, I and maybe a lot of people will see this as a waste of resources which doesn't benefit us in any way
4. if it is not hard enough, it might not be worth doing either, if it fails to satisfy most wanting this
5. what spartaxoxo suggested is something I could actually support, if there would be a consent about it among veterans
You know, there is quite a discrepancy between what is successful and what I see when I look at guild rosters - pretty much everyone in those trading guilds, I was a member of, had high CP levels - but are these veterans able to do this content or not? It could well be that a lot are actually "casual", even they have high CP levels and might not be able to do this content. That is why I think the right choice of difficulty level for this kind of new content will be make or break.
That leaves me with a few questions I have, that I want to ask strictly to better understand where you are coming from.
1. How long have you been playing ESO?
2. Is ESO your first MMO or have you played others?
3. How many characters have you created?
4. What is your highest level character?
I think 2017 or so, when I started playing ESO - it is not my first MMO - I'm playing EVE since 2008, which is PvP everywhere, so I'm not averse to pvp in general, I just don't like it in a role playing game. Other MMOs I'm in are not comparable, because they are social environments and not games, like Second Life. I have 16 characters on PC EU - highest level is 38 - I try to advance very slow paced, because I fear, that once I am at level 50, I will loose interest, because I'm not interested in any kind of endgame content as it is - endgame is an alien concept to me, all before endgame is my game - but not endgame.
I'm more interested in the development of my characters than their level-progression (which means nothing to me), but to experience how their personalities develop over time based on their experiences and general character is what is fun to me - it is old-school role play, where I'm not the character, it might even be possible that some characters are developing in something quite opposite to my rl persona - but as it is role play, I play them as well after their personality - they are not I. And if those characteristics of them show, that they aren't hero-types, then I'll not playing them as such, then they are mediocre or even less - if their personality signalizes that they are lazy, they will nearly always choose the easiest way to get to something or totally avoid doing it - this is my kind of game play - level progression is not that important to me.
... wow ... I'm glad I asked. I would never have guessed anything close to that.
When I first started ESO in 2016 it was my first MMO and to be blunt, I sucked ... epically. I too like the roleplay aspect, but for me it tends to unravel slowly as I play, forming its own story around the character I play. I'm not afraid of the end game content, because for me, it will take a lot before I lose interest in the Elder Scrolls. And while I am very much a CP player (I think about 1500) I still remember the struggles I had when I could not even kill a main quest boss on my own without asking for help. And I know that with the audience ESO will attract (namely devoted Elder Scrolls fans like myself) chances are, there will be more people like myself who are coming to ESO for something new to feed their Elder Scrolls fix. My request for more control over the difficulty comes from that perspective. It is something that I can see giving more people like myself a better experience, and sticking around a lot more. If you implemented difficulty control and quest mode in group dungeons, I would likely never lose interest in ESO, or at least it might take a few decades. And if they did add a quest mode to dungeons it would broaden the market for who would be interested in getting the dungeon DLC's that they spend half the year on.
Tbh the only argument against it i find convincing is cost related, but it’s for devs to decide how to reduce it and the solution can be done in so many different ways to avoid other problems. Updated zone chat functionality could be helpful to that and would provide benefit not only for vet vs normal but also grouping for dailies, dungeons and trials and with it concerns about separation become unjustified.EvilAutoTech wrote: »I would prefer vet instances. It might divide some of the population, but I think that would be temporary. I remember how empty silver and gold were prior to 1 Tamriel.
If cost was not an issue, would you still have problems with it? And assuming that server stability efforts will remain the same either way, where would you rather see the money be put?
The latter question is seen from ZOS perspective quite easy to decide - should the money go into something, which benefits just a minority at most, but a lot of them will still be unhappy, because they all have a quite different idea of what challenge they want, if they have an idea at all - or the other option, invest it in something what has been very successful and where the revenue und profit can be safely estimated - what do you think they will be going for?
So part of your argument against the idea of more difficult overland content is that you feel it is just a minority that would benefit from it? Is that a fair assessment?
my argument is that you don't know what you want nor would you even care to find a solution for that - but leave it to ZOS to figure that out - but as long as you don't have a common ground, how difficult it should actually be, this is a task for ZOS which is likely to make pretty much no one happy - you don't put in any effort at all to declare how difficult you want it, nor would there be any consent at all - this is set up for failure therefore and ZOS would be silly to even consider it.
Yes, I do know what I want. No, I will not just leave it to someone else. That is not my style.
I have spent 20 years playing Elder scrolls games, and I know well what I want to see in one.
Yes, I understand that ESO is not and should not be Skyrim.
I just want to be able to take character after character through the same world I have played almost exclusively for more than a decade. And one of the two things standing in the way of that is the fact that I have no control over the difficulty level.
I am not suggesting to get rid of the easy content. There is a need for that. I just want to be able to turn the dial up every so often like I have in Elder Scrolls games for 20 years now.
[snip] You see, that is exactly what I mentioned above, there might not be any consent about how difficult it should be - so where are you standing with this?
I have a few ideas of how it could happen. I am open to many different possibilities. One of the ways that makes sense to me (recognizing that implementation might be different in reality) is to simply add a new instance for each difficulty level. They already instance the game out a lot anyway. This would just dedicate a few of them to different difficulty levels. It would mean that to change the difficulty you would then have to go through a load screen, but that is just fine from my perspective.
The way I look at it, if they are already creating multiple instances of different zones anyway, why not give them a purpose beyond just controlling server load?
While I think this could be a possibility for future implementations in case it would be popular among veterans (which is not a given, a lot of CP-owners might not be able to do this kind of content, because they might just have grinded their way to high CP levels by doing dolmens over and over again), I doubt that there will be even a start without a consent about how difficult it should be - as in one option. I think your chance to get this started up at all is to get to a consent about 1 difficulty level.
From my personal perspective as a non-CP player it is like this
1. I don't want it to interfere with my gameplay - so I'm all for that you get your separate instance
2. if the difficulty level is in the reach of at least 1 of my characters one day, it might change my attitude towards this content
3. if it is too hard, I and maybe a lot of people will see this as a waste of resources which doesn't benefit us in any way
4. if it is not hard enough, it might not be worth doing either, if it fails to satisfy most wanting this
5. what spartaxoxo suggested is something I could actually support, if there would be a consent about it among veterans
You know, there is quite a discrepancy between what is successful and what I see when I look at guild rosters - pretty much everyone in those trading guilds, I was a member of, had high CP levels - but are these veterans able to do this content or not? It could well be that a lot are actually "casual", even they have high CP levels and might not be able to do this content. That is why I think the right choice of difficulty level for this kind of new content will be make or break.
That leaves me with a few questions I have, that I want to ask strictly to better understand where you are coming from.
1. How long have you been playing ESO?
2. Is ESO your first MMO or have you played others?
3. How many characters have you created?
4. What is your highest level character?
I think 2017 or so, when I started playing ESO - it is not my first MMO - I'm playing EVE since 2008, which is PvP everywhere, so I'm not averse to pvp in general, I just don't like it in a role playing game. Other MMOs I'm in are not comparable, because they are social environments and not games, like Second Life. I have 16 characters on PC EU - highest level is 38 - I try to advance very slow paced, because I fear, that once I am at level 50, I will loose interest, because I'm not interested in any kind of endgame content as it is - endgame is an alien concept to me, all before endgame is my game - but not endgame.
I'm more interested in the development of my characters than their level-progression (which means nothing to me), but to experience how their personalities develop over time based on their experiences and general character is what is fun to me - it is old-school role play, where I'm not the character, it might even be possible that some characters are developing in something quite opposite to my rl persona - but as it is role play, I play them as well after their personality - they are not I. And if those characteristics of them show, that they aren't hero-types, then I'll not playing them as such, then they are mediocre or even less - if their personality signalizes that they are lazy, they will nearly always choose the easiest way to get to something or totally avoid doing it - this is my kind of game play - level progression is not that important to me.
... wow ... I'm glad I asked. I would never have guessed anything close to that.
When I first started ESO in 2016 it was my first MMO and to be blunt, I sucked ... epically. I too like the roleplay aspect, but for me it tends to unravel slowly as I play, forming its own story around the character I play. I'm not afraid of the end game content, because for me, it will take a lot before I lose interest in the Elder Scrolls. And while I am very much a CP player (I think about 1500) I still remember the struggles I had when I could not even kill a main quest boss on my own without asking for help. And I know that with the audience ESO will attract (namely devoted Elder Scrolls fans like myself) chances are, there will be more people like myself who are coming to ESO for something new to feed their Elder Scrolls fix. My request for more control over the difficulty comes from that perspective. It is something that I can see giving more people like myself a better experience, and sticking around a lot more. If you implemented difficulty control and quest mode in group dungeons, I would likely never lose interest in ESO, or at least it might take a few decades. And if they did add a quest mode to dungeons it would broaden the market for who would be interested in getting the dungeon DLC's that they spend half the year on.
I'm playing TES since 2003 - at that time ES was a rich gameplay, with lots of attributes, diverse races and even gender mattered and had quite different abilities - in later games it got watered down more and more and the rich gameplay of the former games got streamlined more towards a combat-oriented game than a true role play game. And ESO is the culmination of this - stats so watered down, that they leave just 2 options - stamina or magicka - pretty much anything in between is not going to be any good - this is one of the reasons ESO is my last TES, because it has lost it's heart and soul and surcomb to the combat crowd, which do not care about role play aspects - I'm basically just playing ESO, because it is on it's way to fulfill a dream of my youth - to see all of Tamriel - and to enjoy the last years I will be involved with TES - ESO is the last TES for me.
ShalidorsHeir wrote: »After some research in craglorn i think there might be another idea of what can be done to overland content:
Difficulty should be higher than it is right now if we dont want to split normal and vet. General difficulty should be increaed to lets it is like craglorn difficulty when it comes to comon overland content like running around and doing quests.
ShalidorsHeir wrote: »In craglorn we had dungeons and other areas considered for groups areas for repeatable quests. These places do not contain that much RP stuff and can be used as fighting ground for mid to end tier players since they are much harder. (i still do them alone while being naked but they should be upscaled as well). Delves and public dungeons can be used for that as well.
spartaxoxo wrote: »Forced vet overland is a bad idea. It will cause a mass exodus of people who enjoy the game the way it is currently working. ESO is a successful game, it doesn't need to be ejecting it's largest group of players to suit the needs of people who'd like it to be a bit harder. Instead they need give us an option to have a harder experience.
ShalidorsHeir wrote: »i wasn talking about forced vet overland - i was talking about craglorn diffidulty as it is right now (enemies "over"land have round about double scaling on everything). But lets just stick with complete optional stuff.
The last we need are even more players in normal overland who would just trash the quest content and make it even worse for everyone else. There is a benefit in overland being unattractive to those seeking harder content - any solution to harder content should be in separate instances, and if that is not possible then the whole idea of harder content should be dropped - because it would ruin the fun for most.
SilverBride wrote: »The last we need are even more players in normal overland who would just trash the quest content and make it even worse for everyone else. There is a benefit in overland being unattractive to those seeking harder content - any solution to harder content should be in separate instances, and if that is not possible then the whole idea of harder content should be dropped - because it would ruin the fun for most.
The whole point of a separate veteran overland is to give players more of a challenge, not to make normal veteran overland less populated so a player can have the world to themselves.
Sylvermynx wrote: »Ok @SilverBride, I understand you probably don't like it when I address you directly, but both yourself and other users seem confused about how instancing works and are worried about subdividing the community. Putting aside the fact that many of the players this change would impact don't even log in all that often, sort of like what happened to you pre-One Tamriel, here is how the system currently works.
Imagine you owned a place that had swimming pools. You have this magic hallway where you can open more pools over time to meet the demands of the number of people arriving. To keep things sane, you only allow, say, to keep the math simple, each pool can only fit 10 people max, but you only ever let them fill to say, 7 people before opening a new pool. This is done so if someone wants to join someone whose already in a pool they can without it becoming over crowded.
Lets say you have 40 people, you would have 5 pools with 7 people and a 6th with only 5. You could, if you wanted the numbers to be more even, have 4 with 7 and 2 with 6, and each group would have a comfortable number of people with room for people to join those who they wanted to be with directly.
Now, if all the pools were shallow and someone wanted a deeper pool to swim, not to worry, you have the ability to change the depth of the pools as need and let's say you change only one of them to accommodate those who want to swim. If only one person wanted this, you would have 1 pool with 1 person, and the rest would be 4 pools with 8 and one with 7. The people who aren't interested in swimming in the deeper pool have slightly more people but still aren't near cap, and those who are interested get to enjoy what they want.
Tweak this ratio as much as you like, but you wouldn't need to open any additional pools to accommodate the 40 people, and outside of extremes like the mentioned "only 1 person" example, and all of them maintain a comfortable number of people.
However, this number, 40 people, would likely rise as people who want to swim in a deeper pool catch wind that you've offered this and as you get more people you open more pools.
This is exactly how it works with zone instances. Divide players into sane numbers so zone chat doesn't become a blur and peoples computers don't fry while entering town, create new instances as the total population needs, and you can organize which instance people are in to curate their individual taste in exactly the same way you would curate players between zones. You, don't take issue with zos adding more zones, do you? Yet they divide players depended on what people want to do, same as this instancing system already does.
It is a good thing you enjoy the game as much as you do. MMO's live or die depending on the population they can maintain, and no one in the right mind would want to change that. But just because you enjoy it as is doesn't invalidate others, and just because you feel the way it is fine doesn't change the fact that every other piece of content in the game has options on how you would want to engage with it. Giving the option gives more players the ability to enjoy the game, and as you've said many times fun is subjective, so please don't assume that your own enjoyment invalidates other players concerns. I've spent thousands of hours in this game because I love it and want to see it succeed, and adding an option, even one you personally wouldn't use, would enable more people to keep enjoying it.
That's an awesome explanation. Thank you for taking the time to post it; probably the best explanation I've seen yet when it comes to this sort of "instance setup".