The difficulty slider is not a solution. Not at all. I don't understand why players in these discussions don't see it. Most quest bosses are not in instances, and it's unlikely that ZoS will place them there. Moreover, some sort of reward system for increased difficulty would be necessary. How are we supposed to play in the same world, fight the same boss, if player strength is scaled differently? It makes no sense.

Different versions of the world for veteran and normal modes? That's a bit better, but why bother? It won't significantly improve our experience. ZoS has spent years planning and developing the overworld as it is now, and it's no surprise that locations become deserted—players simply complete all the POIs, and there's no reason to return.

The overworld needs a completely different approach. New activities, new content, perhaps with adjustable difficulty. Questing could be more than just what it is now. But as for what to do with these dozens of empty decorations made for questing, I have no idea. Hopefully, ZoS has some ideas—time will tell.

One thing I want to say to those who so aggressively defend the current state of the overworld: ZoS wouldn't be changing their development strategy if everything was fine.

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The difficulty slider is not a solution. Not at all. I don't understand why players in these discussions don't see it. Most quest bosses are not in instances, and it's unlikely that ZoS will place them there. Moreover, some sort of reward system for increased difficulty would be necessary. How are we supposed to play in the same world, fight the same boss, if player strength is scaled differently? It makes no sense.

Different versions of the world for veteran and normal modes? That's a bit better, but why bother? It won't significantly improve our experience. ZoS has spent years planning and developing the overworld as it is now, and it's no surprise that locations become deserted—players simply complete all the POIs, and there's no reason to return.

The overworld needs a completely different approach. New activities, new content, perhaps with adjustable difficulty. Questing could be more than just what it is now. But as for what to do with these dozens of empty decorations made for questing, I have no idea. Hopefully, ZoS has some ideas—time will tell.

One thing I want to say to those who so aggressively defend the current state of the overworld: ZoS wouldn't be changing their development strategy if everything was fine.

Why don't you think it makes sense? Why is it any different from now, when we have such a wide variety of player builds, skill and ability? What's the problem with adding one more element which diversifies the playerbase if we're so diverse already? Who will it harm if a player chooses to enable this feature?

I agree that different types of activities are great, but we've already seen Bastion Nymic and Infinite Archive, and while those are fun distractions they don't solve the problem with overland itself - it's boring for anyone who seeks a challenge, and as someone who wants to do overland content more than anything, I'm not going to find something that takes me away from overland to be an acceptable alternative.

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The difficulty slider is not a solution. Not at all. I don't understand why players in these discussions don't see it. Most quest bosses are not in instances, and it's unlikely that ZoS will place them there. Moreover, some sort of reward system for increased difficulty would be necessary. How are we supposed to play in the same world, fight the same boss, if player strength is scaled differently? It makes no sense.

Different versions of the world for veteran and normal modes? That's a bit better, but why bother? It won't significantly improve our experience. ZoS has spent years planning and developing the overworld as it is now, and it's no surprise that locations become deserted—players simply complete all the POIs, and there's no reason to return.

The overworld needs a completely different approach. New activities, new content, perhaps with adjustable difficulty. Questing could be more than just what it is now. But as for what to do with these dozens of empty decorations made for questing, I have no idea. Hopefully, ZoS has some ideas—time will tell.

One thing I want to say to those who so aggressively defend the current state of the overworld: ZoS wouldn't be changing their development strategy if everything was fine.

There is a way to do it, although I believe it would require quite a bit of work to implement: there's a difficulty scaling factor in all damage and enemy stats calculations that takes into account player level. So a CP 600 player could be playing alongside a level 35 player in a random encounter or accompanying them as they complete story missions, and they will both be doing useful damage alongside one another. As an example, players in Borderlands 3 can choose this as one of two options for the game when they start a coop session.

It would be tricky in no small part because there should still be *some* sort of scaling with player progression, so it couldn't be a direct "each player light hits for X% of the target health pool" - stats and progression still have to mean something - but it could be tied to a per-character difficulty slider (much like various existing game play options are set per character).

@ZOS_Kevin: on a more general note speaking as someone who came late to the game and has been slowly working through the story content chapter by chapter, I would caution *against* raising base game difficulty up to current chapter/DLC difficulty, especially for things like incursions, public dungeons, delves, and world bosses. When a zone is largely empty of players, it is already impossible to complete some of the incursions and world bosses for the average player without access to meta-gear and potions. This afternoon, for example, Western Skyrim was pretty much empty except for people grabbing a few giants for the daily. Active harrowstorms were impossible for the two players who actually showed up. Likewise in High Isle, the Sable Knight was one-shot overkilling the two players in the arena - the disparity in damage and health was simply too great. I've seen someone suggest that World and Dungeon boss' level should scale to number of players in the arena. It could even be set up so that there were additional drops if the player count/boss difficulty went over certain thresholds. That would keep things somewhat accessible (especially for new players) without being a cakewalk for the veterans.

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

@disky Scenario: You increased the difficulty to enjoy the quest, but suddenly you realize that all the mobs ahead of you are being obliterated by a player on lower difficulty settings. You finally reach the boss of the quest; the fight begins, and you're executing the mechanics. Then, out of nowhere, a player with lower difficulty settings shows up and nukes the boss with a single ultimate ability.
What if increasing the difficulty level meant better rewards? For example, if three players were fighting the boss—one on a high difficulty and the other two on low difficulty—how would the rewards be distributed?

This scenario is exactly how some players already feel while playing the game. As far as rewards are concerned, so what? If anything the difference in reward quality might be a rarity level. It's not going to set the world on fire. It's an edge case that I don't think is going to matter in the long run, especially if the sum total means people who weren't previously enjoying the game, for years, finally get to enjoy it.