Time for a Dungeon (and trial?) difficulty above Veteran?

msgeek

The proportion of dungeons where people no longer (need) to play mechanics is way too high due to power creep over the years. That's a huge amount of content people can clear without even knowing that there are mechs for certain (actually I think most) boss fights. Everyone these days just burns through, but the mechs are (supposed?) to be the interesting part, and the piece that differentiates one boss from another.

All base game dungeons would benefit from a difficulty above veteran, I want to be able to visit those and actually play the mechs to keep it interesting. Even a lot of DLC dungeons it's the same scenario. Maybe some of the very hardest DLC could benefit from a slight nerf to "veteran" difficulty but then the "new" lets call it "Advanced" difficulty gets buffed slightly compared to today.

What would the rewards be? I guess the easy option would be for set pieces to drop in Legendary quality but that's a bit of a cop-out in my opinion. (I semi-suspected the Jewellery changes for platings could be in preparation for something like this).

Lets consider one of the "features" that perhaps unintentionally makes ESO builds interesting: the fact that you wear 12 pieces. As 12 is divisible by 2/3/4/(5)+2 there are a huge number of combinations, BUT, sets with 4 pieces are basically non-existent in game. If 4-piece sets were much more prevalent, imagine the combinations (in addition to the above):

5+4+2+Mythic
4+4+4

So my preferred rewards, if an additional difficulty was added would be:
each (current) 5 piece set drops as a 4 piece set (the 5 piece bonus applying on the 4th piece) on "Advanced" difficulty. Put "Perfected" on the front of the name if you like.

There would be so much re-playability for existing content with that change, as an avid stickerbook collector, I'd rejoice. As someone who wants to engage with the content rather than just mindlessly burn bosses, I'd rejoice. Not to mention all the fun I'd have obtaining new achivs at a difficulty that is at least somewhat of a challenge.

Araneae6537

I’d be glad for an additional level of difficulty, and a way to get transmute crystals from challenging content too, while we’re at it. No, it wouldn’t be efficient in the sense of transmute crystals per hour or whatever, but I much prefer to get something I want while doing something I enjoy.

I really enjoy the format of four people working together to overcome challenging content. Many older dungeons have interesting mechanics if it wasn’t so easy to melt through everything (artificial phases of stopping damage on the boss does not qualify — how annoying is the dwemer popping up and down into invincibility in Frostvault)

Edit: clarification and fixed typi

Soarora

YES PLEASE! I’ve been thinking about this for like… at least a week. We can’t really change old content because then that changes the meaning of achievements but it’s true that old trials and… almost all the dungeons (like, all of them except maybe CA HM but even that one people can burn through execute to skip it) are too easy now unless the group I’m with is so bad I have to carry them.

Necrotech_Master

just making extra version of the gear and slapping perfected on it is a great way to annoy people

it already happened once in the past with maelstrom arena when they changed the weapon drops in that

it used to only have the weapons on vet, non perfected

then they added perfected weapons and moved non perfected to normal (according to some people it devalued their achievement in the first place, and then on top of that had to re-farm vet for the perfected weapons)

then they added curation (which added another layer of annoyance to all the people who spent countless hours farming to get a specific drop lol)

to be honest i would absolutely not enjoy re-farming 40 dungeons 40+ times each to get "perfected" gear, especially after already having to farm them 40+ times to get all the current gear (its especially not enticing to do when 80% of those dungeon sets are borderline useless/too niche to even use in the first place)

msgeek

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

just making extra version of the gear and slapping perfected on it is a great way to annoy people

it already happened once in the past with maelstrom arena when they changed the weapon drops in that

it used to only have the weapons on vet, non perfected

I disagree that this would parallel the VMA change, whereas that was a new reward for an existing tier of content, this would be a new reward for a new tier of content.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

to be honest i would absolutely not enjoy re-farming 40 dungeons 40+ times each to get "perfected" gear, especially after already having to farm them 40+ times to get all the current gear (its especially not enticing to do when 80% of those dungeon sets are borderline useless/too niche to even use in the first place)

There's nothing requiring you to farm 40 dungeons 40 times, simply run the single dungeon a few times (assuming you'll run content at this tier with people you know so can trade) for any set you might use and you'll likely have everything you need.

Stickerbook (and I say this as someone who has 100%'d it) isn't meant to be farmed, its a long-term project to work towards and gives no benefit beyond completion in and of itself.

40 dungeons dropping perfected gear would be a great "mini-project" to work towards over the next 5 years.

Necrotech_Master

im still working on 100% gear right now (sitting around ~94% right now) and farming dungeons is mind-numbing, mostly with all the dungeons that require a group to get

i had no problem with the ones i could farm on normal solo so i didnt have to wait for a group

i just dont see any fun at all in re-running the ~40 dungeons an additional 40+ times especially if its at a higher difficulty

if i want to farm gear for the collection im fine with running normal, if you add perfected gear you remove any reason to bother running normal at all, because collecting perfected gear unlocks the normal gear, which right there cuts the number of runs in half, and i do not want to farm dungeons in a situation where it requires a group

i would rather them reduce the number of runs it takes to fully collect a dungeon than add a new difficulty (as i already find most of the content fairly challenging to begin with, im not always running in optimized groups, and have no trifectas outside of spirit slayer from vateshran arena)

Araneae6537

I have to agree that adding another layer of perfected gear would not be a good thing for the community — I’m afraid I didn’t read the OP in sufficient depth. An additional achievement and non-exclusive reward like transmute crystals would be sufficient, but additional dyes or something would be fine too.

Necrotech_Master

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I have to agree that adding another layer of perfected gear would not be a good thing for the community — I’m afraid I didn’t read the OP in sufficient depth. An additional achievement and non-exclusive reward like transmute crystals would be sufficient, but additional dyes or something would be fine too.

this, i dont have a problem with adding another difficulty with various completion achievements, but i dont think adding another layer of perfected gear to the already sometimes mind numbing dungeon grind would be awful

add in other bonuses like transmutes, currencies, achievements (which could have dyes or other collectibles) as rewards for a new difficulty

msgeek

I mean, "perfected gear" is kind of on my personal Wishlist for a new dungeon difficulty, but the big ask I guess is the dungeon difficulty itself - to make all that old content relevant again. Even if it's just for some new achivs / the clear

My comments around perfected gear were as a method to keep the higher difficultly relevant / interesting / used post initial-implementation and for the next ~5-10 years. Other methods may work

I had somewhat hinted with my suggested name for the difficulty "advanced" that once power creep hits us again in 5 years time it would allow a difficultly above that... "Master"

Soarora

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im still working on 100% gear right now (sitting around ~94% right now) and farming dungeons is mind-numbing, mostly with all the dungeons that require a group to get

i had no problem with the ones i could farm on normal solo so i didnt have to wait for a group

i just dont see any fun at all in re-running the ~40 dungeons an additional 40+ times especially if its at a higher difficulty

if i want to farm gear for the collection im fine with running normal, if you add perfected gear you remove any reason to bother running normal at all, because collecting perfected gear unlocks the normal gear, which right there cuts the number of runs in half, and i do not want to farm dungeons in a situation where it requires a group

i would rather them reduce the number of runs it takes to fully collect a dungeon than add a new difficulty (as i already find most of the content fairly challenging to begin with, im not always running in optimized groups, and have no trifectas outside of spirit slayer from vateshran arena)

Wouldn’t this be a good thing, though? Maybe not making a perfected dungeon set a 4pc but making them like trial sets where the perfected bonus is minimal and generally non perfected is seen as good enough except at the high end. This would take out some of the speedrunners from normal dungeon pugs while not giving higher level players too significant of an advantage.

I could see people getting upset, but I don’t think this is like vMA either. vMA was that you grinded vet and now that vet level reward is normal so you have to do it all over again. This is an additional difficulty with additional rewards.

Edit: I do think dungeon grind could be cut down though. Most trials have 4 sets, 12 people, and, what, 6+ chests? Dungeons have 3 sets (excluding monster), 4 people, and 2 chests. Doesn’t add up.

Necrotech_Master

Soarora wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im still working on 100% gear right now (sitting around ~94% right now) and farming dungeons is mind-numbing, mostly with all the dungeons that require a group to get

i had no problem with the ones i could farm on normal solo so i didnt have to wait for a group

i just dont see any fun at all in re-running the ~40 dungeons an additional 40+ times especially if its at a higher difficulty

if i want to farm gear for the collection im fine with running normal, if you add perfected gear you remove any reason to bother running normal at all, because collecting perfected gear unlocks the normal gear, which right there cuts the number of runs in half, and i do not want to farm dungeons in a situation where it requires a group

i would rather them reduce the number of runs it takes to fully collect a dungeon than add a new difficulty (as i already find most of the content fairly challenging to begin with, im not always running in optimized groups, and have no trifectas outside of spirit slayer from vateshran arena)

Wouldn’t this be a good thing, though? Maybe not making a perfected dungeon set a 4pc but making them like trial sets where the perfected bonus is minimal and generally non perfected is seen as good enough except at the high end. This would take out some of the speedrunners from normal dungeon pugs while not giving higher level players too significant of an advantage.

I could see people getting upset, but I don’t think this is like vMA either. vMA was that you grinded vet and now that vet level reward is normal so you have to do it all over again. This is an additional difficulty with additional rewards.

Edit: I do think dungeon grind could be cut down though. Most trials have 4 sets, 12 people, and, what, 6+ chests? Dungeons have 3 sets (excluding monster), 4 people, and 2 chests. Doesn’t add up.

i still wouldnt want to re-grind all the gear, and this absolutely not would remove speedrunners from the pool either as they are primarily after quick xp or transmutes, not the gear

i think there could be far better rewards than a new tier of gear, which this is kind of the thing that adds to the power creep (more bonuses = more power, even if its a minimal perfected bonus its still an extra set bonus)