Did you nerf PvE questing even more ?

mague

Davor wrote: »

Original Poster. I dare you to play a Dead is Dead character. If you die, you have to delete this character. Only exceptions if you died during a glitch, disconcet. Other wise, you have to make a new character each time you die.

After all, game is easy right?

I post it again: I dont want it to be hard. I found the game to hard in the beginning myself. I want some danger and damage to make the quests and stories more believable.
There is a buff to 16.5k health an with food you can reach 24k health. You can loot potions, use a class heal. It doesnt matter if you end the fight with almost full health or with 4k health.


I want difficulty just as hard as is required to make the stories, overland and delves more immersive/believable.

MikaHR

mague wrote: »

I want difficulty just as hard as is required to make the stories, overland and delves more immersive/believable.

And who will determine what is this "difficulty"? ZOS has record for every person that ever played ESO, what they did and how they did it. They also have a record of why the game died the first time around and One Tamriel was designed based on that record (also game had most players on PC during launch)

Now, upping delves to have "veteran" mode so that every monster hits harder and has more health, even main story wouldnt be much of an issue, but no better rewards, challenge either is a reward for you or not. But that is exactly that SAME as you using worse gear and no CP so....why?

zyk

Linaleah wrote: »

video games being entertainment and all are by definition - pointless. even so called challenge in the end - is pointless.

This post is basically a poster for something I say fairly often: gaming is being coopted by people who, fundamentally, don't enjoy games.

Whether it's Tetris or Quake, at its core gaming is about problem solving. Without that element, it's merely interactive entertainment.

Up until recently, most games were moderately challenging and had been for decades. Progressive difficulty was standard across all genres. This was especially true in PC gaming which has been the major disruptor over the years.

From what I recall, this all began to change during the PS3/360 generation of console games. l think it was the cinematic Sony games that looked amazing, but actually had very basic gameplay. By the end of that generation most games had become impossible to lose at with virtually no learning curve.

Now it's hit online games. This is basically gaming going full mainstream.

It is very frustrating for me. I've played RPGs since AD&D as a child. I've played adventure games and RPGs on the PC since Space Quest and Bard's Tale. I am reminded of an LCD Soundsystem song, I waaaaasssss there.. PC gaming, in particular, has always been deep. For decades, I've enjoyed learning systems to solve problems and overcome challenges. Being forced to find creative solutions or hone muscle memory or focus (etc) has been the rush I've been addicted to.

It has amazing benefits. Gaming taught me how to function "in the zone" which has helped me avoid several car accidents.

Gaming gave me so many advantages as a young man in the work force. Gaming had given me above average problem solving/leadership/communication skills. I had lead teams I had built and trained with 5 nights a week to success already. Challenging MMOs had given me the mental endurance to grind through double shifts of mentally challenging work. I could handle the ups and downs of competition. I was confident and unafraid to take on new challenges.

Gaming also has been shown to have a huge array of therapeutic benefits.

ESO is actually a tragic monster of a game. Its systems are so deep, complex and detailed and completely pointless 99.999% of the time. It was made for one audience and then contorted for another.

MaleAmazon

Now, upping delves to have "veteran" mode so that every monster hits harder and has more health, even main story wouldnt be much of an issue, but no better rewards, challenge either is a reward for you or not. But that is exactly that SAME as you using worse gear and no CP so....why?

By this logic there is no need to ever have leveling or different gear or different attacks. If you want a challenge, just don´t block attacks. Or have every 3rd keypress be random. Or punch yourself hard in the head before every game session. Also, no need to have motifs or costumes since if you want your character to look different, you can just imagine him / her doing that. In fact I am imagining all my characters beating dead horses now (though I do think they will put in vet difficulty at some point, like they did with jewelry crafting etc).


You are also completely missing the point that this problem affects low level questers. Newbies or not. I am doing the Elsweyr questline on an alt, with no CP, no banked gear or gold, just as if I had only that character. Just to mix things up.

And even though I deliberately play the quests during off-hours (6-7 AM in Sweden), when I have a quest to 'kill these 3 bosses and this extra strong 4th boss', I just jog up to the enemy and attack it twice, then someone jumps in and smashes the boss in 3 seconds. Sometimes you jog up close to the boss while others kill it - congratulations, quest completed.

Of course in a multiplayer game some of this cannot be avoided. But there is no need to deliberately design the game so that it happens as much as possible.

We all have to get along in literal sandbox Elsweyr, but at the moment ZOS caters to and designs for the clueless newbie. Some of us have actually stayed with this game and played through the questlines. We are not, necessarily, 'elitist', nor 'minmax'. Just people having an actual, normal, logical RPG playstyle. Like "I should put on gear when gear is better than what I have on" and "I should block or get out of the way when a giant hammer comes towards my head".

MikaHR

MaleAmazon wrote: »

By this logic there is no need to ever have leveling or different gear or different attacks. If you want a challenge, just don´t block attacks. Or have every 3rd keypress be random. Or punch yourself hard in the head before every game session. Also, no need to have motifs or costumes since if you want your character to look different, you can just imagine him / her doing that. In fact I am imagining all my characters beating dead horses now (though I do think they will put in vet difficulty at some point, like they did with jewelry crafting etc).

Generally no. You have pretty much FULL control on how difficult you want it to be, it is YOUR problem you require someone else to make that choice for you becasue apparently you are not capable of making the choice yourself.

If you want whole game to be custom tailored to YOU, im afraid you will have to stick to single player games.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

You are also completely missing the point that this problem affects low level questers. Newbies or not. I am doing the Elsweyr questline on an alt, with no CP, no banked gear or gold, just as if I had only that character. Just to mix things up.

Theres is no problem, tutorial areas are designed to be exactly that, tutorial areas, they even provide you with buffs.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

And even though I deliberately play the quests during off-hours (6-7 AM in Sweden), when I have a quest to 'kill these 3 bosses and this extra strong 4th boss', I just jog up to the enemy and attack it twice, then someone jumps in and smashes the boss in 3 seconds. Sometimes you jog up close to the boss while others kill it - congratulations, quest completed.

Of course in a multiplayer game some of this cannot be avoided. But there is no need to deliberately design the game so that it happens as much as possible.

I have been advocate of making thigs more solo and peronal in story AND even private delves/public dungeons because of insane power creep that has spiraled out of control in most popular delves/PDs experieance is not good when those reiding the insane power creep can one shot everything and most of the times you either find everything dead or runners that tend to pull whole delve/PD on their way to boss/skyshard.

So again removing CP and HUGELY nerfing top end gear is solution here.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

We all have to get along in literal sandbox Elsweyr, but at the moment ZOS caters to and designs for the clueless newbie. Some of us have actually stayed with this game and played through the questlines. We are not, necessarily, 'elitist', nor 'minmax'. Just people having an actual, normal, logical RPG playstyle. Like "I should put on gear when gear is better than what I have on" and "I should block or get out of the way when a giant hammer comes towards my head".

That is how thing stand....and how things ended up because game died first time around....and it was designed on "traditional parameters" that needed to be completely reworked and One Tamriel is the result of their experience with game dieing before that. Unfortunatley, CP and overpowered top end gear are still remnants of that time that need to be put under control for long term health of the game.

HappyLittleTree

Try soloing the sload in summerset

MaleAmazon

@zyk

Yours is the best post ever. No really.

I am 37, and I don´t know if this is a generational thing. But something is just... off. I see people making forum posts that they are actually angry at ZOS for 'having to' get all the rewards, crates, whatever. People saying they play not to be challenged because they are challenged in real life (poor choice of words but you know what I mean )

Are these players common? When I play Fallout 4 or Skyrim, I don´t think so. There are extra difficulties put in, and in order to be an in-game demigod you do kind of have to game the systems a bit. Pillars of Eternity I find perfectly challenging on normal, and there are several difficulties above that as well as very easy 'story mode' for those who don´t care about combat. In fact I find the players who think PoE to be 'too easy' quite obnoxious (yup, I see how that can be directed at me when it comes to ESO as well, but know that the first boss monster you find in PoE, the cave bear, will literally basically murder you in less than 10 seconds on normal with no warning from the game about its difficulty).


This isn´t about wanting to speedrun Super Mario Bros in world record time. This is about an RPG where the solo story (which should be the core of the game) has become the gaming equivalent of a hamburger, a cookie. Log in for your rewards, use crown potions and crown food, stand by enemy while player you don´t know kills it, next quest please.

It is quite sad and while I expected it in Elsweyr, I really wish the devs could come clear on this subject and just state if they want experienced players to face no challenge in any story content they release.

MikaHR

zyk wrote: »

It was made for one audience and then contorted for another.

Yup, it was made for one audeince, died, and was reworked for another audience and had huge success.

Deal with it.

*theres nothing oh so deep about ESO, its quite simple in fact, so you can take your superior skillz elswhere.

Arent you the guy that claimed "tiered gamerz"...why yes you are! Zyk, the Tiered gamer!

MikaHR

MaleAmazon wrote: »

@zyk

Yours is the best post ever. No really.

I am 37, and I don´t know if this is a generational thing. But something is just... off. I see people making forum posts that they are actually angry at ZOS for 'having to' get all the rewards, crates, whatever. People saying they play not to be challenged because they are challenged in real life (poor choice of words but you know what I mean )

Are these players common? When I play Fallout 4 or Skyrim, I don´t think so. There are extra difficulties put in, and in order to be an in-game demigod you do kind of have to game the systems a bit. Pillars of Eternity I find perfectly challenging on normal, and there are several difficulties above that as well as very easy 'story mode' for those who don´t care about combat. In fact I find the players who think PoE to be 'too easy' quite obnoxious (yup, I see how that can be directed at me when it comes to ESO as well, but know that the first boss monster you find in PoE, the cave bear, will literally basically murder you in less than 10 seconds on normal with no warning from the game about its difficulty).


This isn´t about wanting to speedrun Super Mario Bros in world record time. This is about an RPG where the solo story (which should be the core of the game) has become the gaming equivalent of a hamburger, a cookie. Log in for your rewards, use crown potions and crown food, stand by enemy while player you don´t know kills it, next quest please.

It is quite sad and while I expected it in Elsweyr, I really wish the devs could come clear on this subject and just state if they want experienced players to face no challenge in any story content they release.

POE 1/2 are quite easy even on PoTD. Even solo PoTD runs arent all that difficult. Now....new POE2 ultimate challenge....THAT is challenging and a lot of people suspect undoable. And all you get for reward for doing it is....nothing really....well, digital version of pat on the back.

Fallout 4/Skyrim can be modded to your hearts delight and are extremely easy.

Even Witcher 3 has story mode...and is very easy even on highest difficulty.

And none of that matters because those are single player games.

And i started gaming on ZX Spectrum. So cut that "im houlier dan you gamer".

Yes, guess what, vast majority of people consider computer games as mere entertaiment, not their life(time) achievement because their real life is devoid of those.

mocap

stop thinking only about casuals. They already have 1k+ casual quests (actually almost 2k lol). Do they realy need more?

MikaHR

They are the ones keeping the lights on so...yeah.

MaleAmazon

Generally no. You have pretty much FULL control on how difficult you want it to be, it is YOUR problem you require someone else to make that choice for you becasue apparently you are not capable of making the choice yourself.

If you want whole game to be custom tailored to YOU, im afraid you will have to stick to single player games.

I can make the choice to try to solo stuff that is designed as group content. But I cannot play a story mode that isn´t the equivalent to 'iddqd idkfa' without deliberately gimping myself. Different.

Also 'whole game custom tailored to me'... missing the entire concept of self debuff, are we?

Theres is no problem, tutorial areas are designed to be exactly that, tutorial areas, they even provide you with buffs.

The entire zone of Elsweyr is not supposed to be a "tutorial area". It takes place after the main quest (sort of). Same as previous DLC. I am not sure it is even possible to play the story and not be CP160 unless you delete your character repeatedly.

That is how thing stand....and how things ended up because game died first time around....and it was designed on "traditional parameters" that needed to be completely reworked and One Tamriel is the result of their experience with game dieing before that.

The game was unworkable because they made it so you would outlevel zones. Therefore if you wanted to experience content you would have to create alts, or do the content as a murder machine without gaining XP (literally). You could not play with friends unless you were on the same strength level. You could not even play with friends your level in Craglorn, because you would be on slightly different stages of the same quest. It was an unworkable mess.

One Tamriel was a very nice solution to this and allows everyone to go anywhere at any level, more or less. However, ZOS has neglected to address the fact that players do in fact still get stronger and better.

In the long term it is very unhealthy for the game, since it will eventually get the player base it caters to. Meaning in this case 95% people who want to kill everything in 1 hit and collect all motifs like Pokemon (of course while not actually playing, rather lying dead on the ground while the other 11 people they paid finish the trial), and 5% people who throw themselves on the floor crying because they lost 65.8 DPS because of a skill nerf.

And i started gaming on ZX Spectrum. So cut that "im houlier dan you gamer".

In no way did I have that attitude other than in your head.

Pillars of Eternity, the tutorial bandit leader does big damage to you. The cave bear is impossible to kill for new players with plenty of game experience from other games. ESO, you can ignore everything except 'click button to damage enemy' and win. For the whole f-ing game.

At this point you are just a troll though, so... If you have anything meaningful to say please do, but otherwise you´ve made your point; "ESO is an age 18+ game designed for people whose computers only have WASD keys and a left mouse button and anyone who ".

Chadak

So much gatekeeping about what The Holy Point™ of playing a game is.

All I've got to say is this; if you keep looking for Olympian challenges on the junior varsity team, whose fault is it that you never find them there?

Who do we blame for that? You or the team?

MikaHR

MaleAmazon wrote: »

I can make the choice to try to solo stuff that is designed as group content. But I cannot play a story mode that isn´t the equivalent to 'iddqd idkfa' without deliberately gimping myself. Different.

Deliberately gimping yourself is exactly what ultimate challenges in Pillars of Eternity are. Even "difficulty levels" in games are just deliberately gimping yourself, the more the "higher" you go on "difficulty" slider

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Also 'whole game custom tailored to me'... missing the entire concept of self debuff, are we?

You can "self debuff" yourself at any time (except first 15-20 levels or so where game provides you with buffs

MaleAmazon wrote: »

The entire zone of Elsweyr is not supposed to be a "tutorial area". It takes place after the main quest (sort of). Same as previous DLC. I am not sure it is even possible to play the story and not be CP160 unless you delete your character repeatedly.

No, newbie buffs taper off at lvl 15-20 or so. Plenty of other gamers around is just an online game thing. You want to argue all the people doing the dragons make the game worse because it "removes challenge"?

MaleAmazon wrote: »

The game was unworkable because they made it so you would outlevel zones. Therefore if you wanted to experience content you would have to create alts, or do the content as a murder machine without gaining XP (literally). You could not play with friends unless you were on the same strength level. You could not even play with friends your level in Craglorn, because you would be on slightly different stages of the same quest. It was an unworkable mess.

If you played as intended you didnt outlevel anything. In fact you needed to finish the story to even have access to cadwells silver/gold vet areas. In fact it was designed EXACTLY on premises you put out here. The hilarious thing is that you cant even figure that out.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

One Tamriel was a very nice solution to this and allows everyone to go anywhere at any level, more or less. However, ZOS has neglected to address the fact that players do in fact still get stronger and better.

ZOS can control how much stronger players get....and power creep has spiraled out of control. I agree with you there, they need to fix tha by removing CP and do serious nerf to top end gear as well and making monster sets work only in dungeon environments

MaleAmazon wrote: »

In the long term it is very unhealthy for the game, since it will eventually get the player base it caters to. Meaning in this case 95% people who want to kill everything in 1 hit and collect all motifs like Pokemon (of course while not actually playing, rather lying dead on the ground while the other 11 people they paid finish the trial), and 5% people who throw themselves on the floor crying because they lost 65.8 DPS because of a skill nerf.

They did it your way before and the game died.

And yes, power creep has been extreme (and probably biggest bane of online games) issue. It invalidates content. Its not contents fault it is power creeps fault. So yeah, you are barking at the wrong tree, because all that power creep will do in the future is making content more - invalid. Or do you expect them to add more and more "difficulty levels" to the game every time power creep does its thing? Hmmmmm, what does that reminds me of?

MaleAmazon

All I've got to say is this; if you keep looking for Olympian challenges on the junior varsity team, whose fault is it that you never find them there?

Who do we blame for that? You or the team?

Don´t deliberately misrepresent the point. ESO when I started was reasonably hard. 90% of fights were pretty easy, 95% when you learned most of the combat (doesn´t take more than a few days at most), 99% if you made sure to keep your gear up to par.

Then you had those fights when things got hairy, like Doshia. Good times. But they nerfed those. Ok, happens.

ZOS has designed a storyline that goes Alliance War + prophet -> Morrowind, Clockwork, Summerset -> Elsweyr. With TG, DB etc to boot. You don´t have to do it this way, but the game is actually *not* designed to have you play on new characters every DLC story.

And these are all story quests. (I don´t actually like PvP for the most part and I play ESO mostly like a single player game).

And somehow, it has now become par for the course to have players outlevel the game content the way you would outlevel Stonefalls. To have people to not know what a heal is.

I don´t know if it is a developer meta comment on life or whatever, but it need to be addressed.

Cambionn

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

^ Cambion2401, yes, there are ton of ways to make Skyrim or Witcher3 really easy by certain builds even on harder difficulty. But you need to specifically build for it and still apply some kind of tactics/rotation.

No, that's the point. No matter what you do, you have to try hard to die in Skyrim much more than in ESO. Combat is so clunky that you can barely do much in regards of thinking. As long as you hit somewhat in the right direction you'll do fine in Skyrim. Built also doesn't matter ***, as you'll become OP no matter what you do. The hardest thing is not having bugs and glitches making stuff that should work not work, but since it's more often the opposite and you'll get something in your favour by bugs and glitches, I wouldn't call that a point either.

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Go play Dark Souls.

I would like to argue Dark Souls isn't hard, just unforgiving. Enemies always do the same. You just need to get a grasp of what algorithm the enemies follow, and once you got that it'll be easy to counter it because it's always the same. That's why first play trough is always the hardest. Counts for a decent amount of Japanese games I played (being more unforgiving instead of harder).

zyk wrote: »

Gaming is being coopted by people who, fundamentally, don't enjoy games.
Up until recently, most games were moderately challenging and had been for decades. Progressive difficulty was standard across all genres. This was especially true in PC gaming which has been the major disruptor over the years.

I too agree that gaming in general has become too easy because people don't want a challenge. I've got older children games that are easier than modern adult games. Ever since gaming became something mainstream instead of something mainly done by nerds it went backwards. Ever since people become more rude to devs and modders as well, and expect everything for free in perfect state, and quick too.

But still I feel ESO isn't being a big issue, it's simply made as a casual game. Even having a few more complex options integrated for those who want to use it, it's still meant to be played casually. Overworld being easy is good to me because enemies appear every few meters. I want to be able to go places normally. Else, the R in RPG get's lost very easily because you're so focused on fighting you loose the feeling of being in a story every time you need to travel a bit further. Bosses etc should be a challenge. If they make those a harder I don't mind, but if they keep it like this I'll survive since I play this game in a casual fashion anyways.

zyk wrote: »

Being forced to find creative solutions or hone muscle memory or focus (etc) has been the rush I've been addicted to.

Maybe there lies a difference here. I played RPGs mainly as an escape of this world, back in the day even got very near addiction as I coped with depression that way. Play another person. Feel like you're something big. Be in another world. It has to be hard enough I can actually feel good about something, but world-building and such are important for me too. I cared more about having to think a few steps in front and having dept and importance in choices you make than in skills like muscle memory. I hate when people call old RPGs I played "broken" because they didn't think about what built to make or what chooses could mean and *** it up, just to find out there is no respec button because the game was aimed at people that thought before they did something and they would have to start over because they where being dumb.

zyk wrote: »

PC gaming, in particular, has always been deep.

I disagree. I remember a time console games where the bigger, better versions of games, and PC games where always having less content. Right now PC is defiantly at the top tho, but retro I often play console still. But again, maybe it's because we're looking for different things in games.

MikaHR

Wow, and you cant see that solution (just like before) is to not let players "oulevel" the content (just like before) by having out of control power creep. You want to revert to what the game was at launch and have various "difficulty levels" that match the power creep....just like it was at launch (yeah, levels are nothing else but power creep).

Interesting.

MaleAmazon

If you played as intended you didnt outlevel anything. In fact you needed to finish the story to even have access to cadwells silver/gold vet areas. In fact it was designed EXACTLY on premises you put out here. The hilarious thing is that you cant even figure that out.

Nope. It was designed to have you be lvl 50 when you finished the story content of the game, and you would not be able to go back to areas you had been, without being massively overpowered there. And you could easily outlevel zones by exploring and doing sidequests. The game did attempt to nudge you to new zones with the MQ level stages, but this did not work at all - since in order to keep the reasonable challenge you had to stop exploring a zone once you were a certain level (or you would outlevel the content). There was no way to keep that system when some people only did MQ story content and other people adventured so much more. It was a bad system and I think they actually knew that to begin with (hence the selling point of One Tamriel).

The rest of what you write is actually just completely confused. I can set my own challenges and do. I should not have to do that while deliberately having my character drink poison (as was suggested) just to be reasonably challenged when I keep playing the story as written, with the character I have created.

Or do you expect them to add more and more "difficulty levels" to the game every time power creep does its thing? Hmmmmm, what does that reminds me of?

Most other games since the dawn of electronics?



And in the end.

Why should they create it?

Because I pay them to.

MikaHR

MaleAmazon wrote: »

If you played as intended you didnt outlevel anything. In fact you needed to finish the story to even have access to cadwells silver/gold vet areas. In fact it was designed EXACTLY on premises you put out here. The hilarious thing is that you cant even figure that out.

Nope. It was designed to have you be lvl 50 when you finished the story content of the game, and you would not be able to go back to areas you had been, without being massively overpowered there. And you could easily outlevel zones by exploring and doing sidequests. The game did attempt to nudge you to new zones with the MQ level stages, but this did not work at all - since in order to keep the reasonable challenge you had to stop exploring a zone once you were a certain level (or you would outlevel the content). There was no way to keep that system when some people only did MQ story content and other people adventured so much more. It was a bad system and I think they actually knew that to begin with (hence the selling point of One Tamriel).

The rest of what you write is actually just completely confused. I can set my own challenges and do. I should not have to do that while deliberately having my character drink poison (as was suggested) just to be reasonably challenged when I keep playing the story as written, with the character I have created.

Or do you expect them to add more and more "difficulty levels" to the game every time power creep does its thing? Hmmmmm, what does that reminds me of?

Most other games since the dawn of electronics?



And in the end.

Why should they create it?

Because I pay them to.

No you couldnt outlevel anything by just exploring and doing sidequests, in fact that was baked in into xp curve (sidequests gi quite varying amount of xp, most of them reward very very small amount), the only way you outleveld stuff was if you grinded something, be it monsters or dolmens or w/e. But doing exploring and sidequests....nope, you were pretty much required to do that in order to stay within level range (or alterntively grind something)

And somehow, ZOS should magically match every encounter in the game to that specific player power creep/skill level. In an online environment, nonetheless. Or, you could alternatively do what you want and match your power creep level to match the world.

Because guess what....there is a huge spread of levels (CPs) and gear in the game as well as skll, and however they make it someone will complain that its too easy or too hard.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Most other games since the dawn of electronics?

No, specific types of games that arent really made any more, do the most popular games today (LoL, Fortnite and the rest) have it nope. But then, we are talking about outdated concept that is on the way out.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

And in the end.

Why should they create it?

Because I pay them to.

That would be fine if you could keep the lights on by yourself, unfortunately for you, ZOS has to make the game for those who keep the lights on, just ask 1/2 of ArenaNet and 1/3 of WoW employees that were sacked because of doing what you want ZOS to do, how they feel about it and if they agree with you.

If ZOS hadnt reworked the game to do opposite of what you demand in this thread, there would be no ESO to play today.

zyk

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Yours is the best post ever. No really.

I am 37, and I don´t know if this is a generational thing. But something is just... off. I see people making forum posts that they are actually angry at ZOS for 'having to' get all the rewards, crates, whatever. People saying they play not to be challenged because they are challenged in real life (poor choice of words but you know what I mean )

@MaleAmazon
Thanks! I agree with your post entirely.

I want to say that when I say challenge or problem solving, I'm not necessarily talking about Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden. I want the systems and mechanics to be meaningful. I want to have to think about what I do and for there to be some consequences for mistakes.

The original Vet overland difficulty in ESO wasn't very hard. The problem was that levels 1-50 did not prepare the player for them. Just by learning the rules, it was much easier.

The real problem with this game was that it launched late, unfinished and broken in many ways. The hype was massive, there was tons of good will and the enthusiasm among players was extremely high going into launch. And then the fell floor from under us.

The original ESO did not fail because it was too difficult. It failed because of all of its problems. ZOS chose the path we're on, but it was not the only one available. Though ffxiv is not my cup of tea, I admire how they handled their disappointing launch and eventually provided their core audience the kind of experience they were looking for. ZOS decided to cash in on Microtransactions and become Skyrim Nexus Online. But more than that, they more or less completely abandoned their original audience, giving them mere table scraps -- especially AvA players who had great things promised to them.

MikaHR wrote: »

Arent you the guy that claimed "tiered gamerz"...why yes you are! Zyk, the Tiered gamer!

Gamerz is your word, not mine.

Cambion2401 wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

PC gaming, in particular, has always been deep.

I disagree. I remember a time console games where the bigger, better versions of games, and PC games where always having less content. Right now PC is defiantly at the top tho, but retro I often play console still. But again, maybe it's because we're looking for different things in games.

I do not ever recall such a time. As far as I am aware, there have always existed PC games with far more depth than anything found on consoles. And there was good reason for that. The open nature of the PC industry allowed for far more variety than the console business that was tightly controlled by the hardware manufacturers and major publishers.

The highly independent disruptive PC devs of the 90s basically invented modern gaming unconstrained by consoles. Currently, console and pc gaming are just very slightly different and mainly defined by exclusives.

That's not to say there was never brilliance or disruption on the console side, but it tended to be different and generally had to be highly accessible.

In regards to RPGs, which classic RPGs were ESO easy? You couldn't just go yolo in an SSI game. And then there was Bioware...

Chadak

MaleAmazon wrote: »

All I've got to say is this; if you keep looking for Olympian challenges on the junior varsity team, whose fault is it that you never find them there?

Who do we blame for that? You or the team?

Don´t deliberately misrepresent the point. ESO when I started was reasonably hard. 90% of fights were pretty easy, 95% when you learned most of the combat (doesn´t take more than a few days at most), 99% if you made sure to keep your gear up to par.

Then you had those fights when things got hairy, like Doshia. Good times. But they nerfed those. Ok, happens.

ZOS has designed a storyline that goes Alliance War + prophet -> Morrowind, Clockwork, Summerset -> Elsweyr. With TG, DB etc to boot. You don´t have to do it this way, but the game is actually *not* designed to have you play on new characters every DLC story.

And these are all story quests. (I don´t actually like PvP for the most part and I play ESO mostly like a single player game).

And somehow, it has now become par for the course to have players outlevel the game content the way you would outlevel Stonefalls. To have people to not know what a heal is.

I don´t know if it is a developer meta comment on life or whatever, but it need to be addressed.

Blaming the team it is then.

MaleAmazon

No you couldnt outlevel anything by just exploring and doing sidequests, in fact that was baked in into xp curve, the only way you outleveld stuff was if you grinded something, be it monsters or dolmens or w/e. But doing exploring and sidequests....nope, you were pretty much required to do that in order to stay within level range.


If ZOS hadnt reworked the game to do opposite of what you demand in this thread, there would be no ESO to play today.

I remember having grey text sidequests. It sucked. I remember not being able to go back and do quests I had 'missed' without the complete lack of challenge that is commonplace now. This was not with me grinding. You had to juggle your quests, but as we both said there is no way to have this system accomodate to different types of players.

Anyway, I´ll restate my case as clearly as I can since I am getting tired of this and I have choir practice.

So:

ZOS did not do "the opposite" of what I "demand". They did do what I want to do now. They made it so that you do not utterly outlevel story content, meaning all people could get into the game and enjoy the content.

The issue is that they did this by putting everyone in tutorial mode, which was sort of fine.

But then they kept that mode stuck on that setting.

For the entire length of the combined story.


Thus, we are now going back to the pre-1T world, except you now don´t outlevel the new content - you already have, simply by being a loyal customer.

This has resulted in a game world where, in order to play the story content that I bloody well paid for in the first place (I don´t mind lining Alfred Molina´s pockets though), I have to either:

1. Play my actual main character the way I did in Skyrim etc, while having dungeon bosses not be able to outdamage my passive healing regen, and not needing to pay any attention to anything the game throws at me enemywise, which is 'yawn',

or,

2. Play on a new character, deliberately not taking advantage of any in-game stuff I have gained - and ignore that I have dialogue options that imply I don´t know characters I am actually very familiar with. Ignore that the game cues me to assign CP points. Ignore that even if I am in an interesting fight, someone else can nuke that enemy and jump away.

And the suggested solution is that we all remove our gear and drink poison.

This is not healthy for the game.

The fact that I unsubbed and am going to take a break from ESO once I´ve explored Elsweyr enough isn´t helping them economically (small drop, big ocean though of course).

Rawkan

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

You can 1-2 shot every overland enemy in the game, including quest bosses.

Almost as if it's not designed around max CP players.

MikaHR

zyk wrote: »

snip

Funny, because widspread gaming was started by consoles, PC gaming was pure *** until 1997/98 or so. And games that defined most of gaming (like Driver, GTA, shooters... ... ...) all started on consoles. In fact vast majority of genre defining games started on consoles.

You couldnt be more wrong. But then that is starting to be the theme with you.

(and yes, i consider Amiga and Atari consoles much more than PCs)

MikaHR

MaleAmazon wrote: »

No you couldnt outlevel anything by just exploring and doing sidequests, in fact that was baked in into xp curve, the only way you outleveld stuff was if you grinded something, be it monsters or dolmens or w/e. But doing exploring and sidequests....nope, you were pretty much required to do that in order to stay within level range.


If ZOS hadnt reworked the game to do opposite of what you demand in this thread, there would be no ESO to play today.

I remember having grey text sidequests. It sucked. I remember not being able to go back and do quests I had 'missed' without the complete lack of challenge that is commonplace now. This was not with me grinding. You had to juggle your quests, but as we both said there is no way to have this system accomodate to different types of players.

Anyway, I´ll restate my case as clearly as I can since I am getting tired of this and I have choir practice.

So:

ZOS did not do "the opposite" of what I "demand". They did do what I want to do now. They made it so that you do not utterly outlevel story content, meaning all people could get into the game and enjoy the content.

The issue is that they did this by putting everyone in tutorial mode, which was sort of fine.

But then they kept that mode stuck on that setting.

For the entire length of the combined story.


Thus, we are now going back to the pre-1T world, except you now don´t outlevel the new content - you already have, simply by being a loyal customer.

This has resulted in a game world where, in order to play the story content that I bloody well paid for in the first place (I don´t mind lining Alfred Molina´s pockets though), I have to either:

1. Play my actual main character the way I did in Skyrim etc, while having dungeon bosses not be able to outdamage my passive healing regen, and not needing to pay any attention to anything the game throws at me enemywise, which is 'yawn',

or,

2. Play on a new character, deliberately not taking advantage of any in-game stuff I have gained - and ignore that I have dialogue options that imply I don´t know characters I am actually very familiar with. Ignore that the game cues me to assign CP points. Ignore that even if I am in an interesting fight, someone else can nuke that enemy and jump away.

And the suggested solution is that we all remove our gear and drink poison.

This is not healthy for the game.

The fact that I unsubbed and am going to take a break from ESO once I´ve explored Elsweyr enough isn´t helping them economically (small drop, big ocean though of course).

uh oh, you actually want them to revert what theyve done, and instead looking for complete solution by removing the out of control power creep, you want them to make parts of the world more "difficult" based on power creep level....which equates to what we had at launch. The whole thing you propse is same as VET areas were at launch....and those were epic failure as we could nicely witness and is quite documented.

And guess what, thats exactly how you play a single player game, when you start new playthrough you start from scratch and have to pretend you dont know the characters you are actually very familiar with.

And the suggested solution is that you take your difficulty slider in your own hands....just like you do in single players game, in a a bit different format....and an irony that you just refuse to do it and claim it ridiculous when its the SAME as difficulty slider.

And it is an online game and yes, there will be other players around, im quite an advocate to make a lot of stuff like delves and PDs have private option. Dungeons should have solo normal/vet mode too. But open world is open world.

ynimma

I guess the psychiology of challenge and rewarding activity has been completely discarded and sacrificed on the altar of the psychology of soulless capitalism (a.k.a.: get as much profit as quick as you can).
The game is so easy and boring that it feels like a complete waste of time now. I completely lost the incentive of logging in. When I do we only use it as a "background ambience" with a little group of friends running through vet dungeons while talking on discord about completely different matters not at all related to the activity - and I don't consider myself a good gamer at all.
Thing is that the world of ESO is beautiful, the lore is great, the questing could be exciting because of the prior two reasons but it's been reduced to a shallow button mashing environment with not even a tiny sense of achievement to be had on any activities really.
I haven't bought Elseweyr, a new zone and line of quest - however good that may be - is just not enough without any rewarding gameplay. I might be interested in a new class like the necro but there's no way I'll level it up with literally no effort needed but fruitless time to put in until it gets to certain numbers. I also have dropped ESO+ quite a time ago because of the EU server problems.
So yeah. Maybe the capitalist approach does not work on everyone.

ESO unfortunately ceased to be a game any more.
There's nothing to play. We can only watch it but for a movie it's not that good.

MikaHR

Yes, ESO should follow the footsteps of Wildstar to accomodate you.

Chadak

ynimma wrote: »

I guess the psychiology of challenge and rewarding activity has been completely discarded and sacrificed on the altar of the psychology of soulless capitalism (a.k.a.: get as much profit as quick as you can).
The game is so easy and boring that it feels like a complete waste of time now. I completely lost the incentive of logging in. When I do we only use it as a "background ambience" with a little group of friends running through vet dungeons while talking on discord about completely different matters not at all related to the activity - and I don't consider myself a good gamer at all.
Thing is that the world of ESO is beautiful, the lore is great, the questing could be exciting because of the prior two reasons but it's been reduced to a shallow button mashing environment with not even a tiny sense of achievement to be had on any activities really.
I haven't bought Elseweyr, a new zone and line of quest - however good that may be - is just not enough without any rewarding gameplay. I might be interested in a new class like the necro but there's no way I'll level it up with literally no effort needed but fruitless time to put in until it gets to certain numbers. I also have dropped ESO+ quite a time ago because of the EU server problems.
So yeah. Maybe the capitalist approach does not work on everyone.

ESO unfortunately ceased to be a game any more.
There's nothing to play. We can only watch it but for a movie it's not that good.

It really doesn't occur to you that if you find it all too easy-peasy, you're not the demographic the difficulty is aimed at.

I know. You think it should be aimed at you. You said yourself that you don't consider yourself a good gamer at all, but in the same lamentation, talk about how you don't even pay attention while running vet dungeons.

Wanna know something hilarious?

You're an extremely skilled gamer if you don't even have to pay attention in vet dungeons.

You're a bell end. You're the 1%.

You're the outlier, not the average.

The difficulty you're looking for isn't in the open world of any modern AAA MMO. It hasn't been for a lot of years. Chances are really good that it never will be again, and it isn't because everyone and everything are stupid and all the devs in the world only care about 'soulless capitalism'.

You used to be a level 1 noob gamer. You're a level 20 veteran now. Stop being so surprised that you find so much of this so easy now, and try a little harder to recognize that you're the outlier, not the people that find the game to be challenging enough just as it is.

mague

MikaHR wrote: »

But that is exactly that SAME as you using worse gear and no CP so....why?

Why ?

Hazak, for example, is a drug lord and his gang are cop killers. Without some damage, sneaking, killing roaming guards and the sense of danger the quest and the location are a joke.

VaranisArano

mague wrote: »

that much.

MikaHR wrote: »

But that is exactly that SAME as you using worse gear and no CP so....why?

Why ?

Hazak, for example, is a drug lord and his gang are cop killers. Without some damage, sneaking, killing roaming guards and the sense of danger the quest and the location are a joke.

He's like the big fish of the tiny pond that is a starter island.

If I wanted a harder start, I'd start a brand new character in one of the chapter zones, where at least some of the enemies have actual mechanics and reasonable health bars.