Veteran Zones in One Tamriel, a Difficulty Setting Concept

Ffastyl

Veteran zones today are post-50 content under the "What If" storyline of Cadwell's Silver and Gold, allowing the player to continue progressing in solo PvE and see all of Tamriel on one character. In the past, 2014 precisely, Veteran zones were a challenging post game optimized for groups of two or three players. It was a bump in the difficulty curve and one many solo players could not handle. Fighting three trash mobs was dangerous - deadly, without a proper strategy. But a section of the community could, and enjoyed that increase in challenge. Within half a year the difficulty was smoothed out.

One Tamriel is on the horizon and it brings the existence of Cadwell's Silver and Gold and Veteran zones into question. With players able to freely roam Nirn under battle leveling, what purpose could these post-50 zones serve? Perhaps they can be repurposed as a "difficulty setting." By applying the normal/Veteran toggle for group instances to zones, the player could travel between phases of the world - one in the myriad of levels pre-50 and the other scaled up to post-50 2014 Veteran zone difficulty or higher (eg CP 300 mobs). The toggle will take effect the next time a player loads into a zone/instance as opposed to immediately and provides a 'safe' haven for those shy of crowded areas as the assumed majority will stay in the normal instances. By creating a separate phase of the world for this increased difficulty, we circumvent the issue a difficulty slider would bring: "What if two people on different difficulties attack the same mob?" The two players cannot interact with one another. Repurposing Veteran zones provides a currently lacking challenge to those who crave it without forcing it on the entire playerbase.

If you like this idea, leave a reply - let the Devs know there is demand!

Legoless

I think that would be an excellent idea.

Bonzodog01

I think you will find that one of the other reasons behind one Tamriel is server space - the cadwells gold and silver are hosted on a separate server for each alliance right now, if I understand it correctly. So, in practice, this would then free up 3 servers per platform, possibly allowing for future DLC expansions (one of the reasons PvP campaigns were closed was to free up servers).

Ffastyl

With this repurposing in One Tamriel, only one server would be needed to host the Veteran zones, still freeing up two servers, if we understand it correctly, @Bonzodog01 . I also know from experience that the servers have difficulty handling many players within a small area, as when dye stations were added many players experienced instability and crashing around them due to the shear number of players present. And recalling the recent ingame filming at the Undaunted Enclaves, some people crashed in response to the high population density. Leaving one server to host the Veteran zones could prevent instability from overpopulation by splitting the population between instances, like how the three alliances are segregated now. The shift to One Tamriel implies they have improved the server's capability to handle densely packed players, so this point may be moot.

Legoless

Bonzodog01 wrote: »

I think you will find that one of the other reasons behind one Tamriel is server space - the cadwells gold and silver are hosted on a separate server for each alliance right now, if I understand it correctly. So, in practice, this would then free up 3 servers per platform, possibly allowing for future DLC expansions (one of the reasons PvP campaigns were closed was to free up servers).

That's entirely inaccurate. There's only one megaserver, and performance will likely stay the same with this change.

Bonzodog01

Legoless wrote: »

That's entirely inaccurate. There's only one megaserver, and performance will likely stay the same with this change.

OK, if you hadn't figured this out by now, a "Megaserver" is in practice a server cluster, with a single head unit. So, the way the game works is by hosting different alliances on different blades of the cluster which then all interact with other via some clever scripting.

Enodoc

Bonzodog01 wrote: »

Legoless wrote: »

That's entirely inaccurate. There's only one megaserver, and performance will likely stay the same with this change.

OK, if you hadn't figured this out by now, a "Megaserver" is in practice a server cluster, with a single head unit. So, the way the game works is by hosting different alliances on different blades of the cluster which then all interact with other via some clever scripting.

The game dynamically creates new instances of zones dependent on population. Consider right now there may be 5 DC Glenumbras, 3 AD Glenumbras, and 1 EP Glenumbra. After the One Tamriel change, there may still be 9 Glenumbras in total, but the player distribution between them will be different.

Xodarap777

The game WILL need a "difficulty setting" type of concept in order for One Tamriel to work for longer than the first month of returning players and a few new ones.

Currently, the difficulty curve of the game levels out so flatly that it becomes boring after a month or two. Terribly boring.

I don't even want a "hard" game, but I want my skill choices and battle strategies to mean *something*. As it stands, I could spam any ability while eating a sammich and watching TV, and still survive any on-level solo encounter with no problems. So why do I update my armor and level my abilities?